S amdndr es 

r mm 



NEW GRAND A 

Compiled by 
I. F.HOLT 01 

Published by Harper & Bio ; 
1856. 

Scale of Miles . 




u 



NEW GRANADA: 



TWENTY MONTHS IN THE ANDES. 



BY ISAAC F. HOLTON, M.A., 

PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY AND NATURAL HISTORY IN MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE. 



WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 



At* 





NEW YORK: fc 

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS. 



FRANKLIN SQUARE. 



1857. 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand 
eight hundred and fifty-six, by 

Harper & Brothers, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District 
of New York. 



y r xy^ s ? 



/r* 



PREFACE. 



The botanist can not study the productions of the torrid zone 
without a strong desire to see with his own eyes the regions of 
perpetual summer. This desire grows from year to year, but 
each succeeding year generally binds him closer to local duties 
and his home. In the case of the author, this centripetal force 
had not developed itself in due proportion to its antagonist, and 
a visit to the tropic world was the result. 

His attention was directed more particularly to New Granada 
by the scantiness of botanical information on a region so pro- 
fusely rich in plants. Not even a catalogue of a collector had 
appeared since the results of Humboldt's visit, at the begin- 
ning of this century, were given to the world. 

Nor were the sources of general information on that republic 
much more copious or recent. Our libraries were found to con- 
tain several works on Colombia, written during that terrible 
struggle with the mother country which terminated, or, rather, 
took on a chronic form in 1825, but not a volume was to be 
found which had been written since New Granada had taken her 
place among the nations. No answer could be found to the in- 
quiry what effect thirty years of liberty had produced on a land 
that had been till that time sealed up from all the world by Span- 
ish despotism. This void in our geographical information was 
the determining cause of the journey narrated in this volume. 

Thus my task was commenced with a more correct estimate 
of the need of the undertaking than of its difficulty. A want 
of reliable facts began to produce its inconveniences even before 
leaving our shores, impeded the journey at every stage, and aft- 
erward still more embarrassed the composition of the narrative. 
The observations of earlier travelers, who resided in the country 
for some special object, or hurried through it ignorant alike of 



Y i PREFACE. 

the genius and the language of the people, were so frequently 
erroneous, that I did, perhaps, not often enough distrust my 
own conclusions when different from theirs. In addition to 
these old works, accident has lately thrown in my way a small 
book, entitled "Bogota in 1836-7. By J. Steuart. Printed 
for the author by Harper & Brothers, 82 Cliff Street, 1838.'" 
I had heard of this book in South America, but all my search 
for it in libraries and book-stores had been in vain. I know of 
no other copy in the United States. 

No Spanish-American nation has furnished a larger propor- 
tion of authors than New Granada ; still, their works are neither 
numerous nor easy of access. The " Semanario de la Nueva 
Granada, "published in Bogota in 1810, various scientific papers 
by Boussaingault, and a pamphlet by President T. C. Mosquera, 
have been freely used. On the latter I have relied for the names 
of many animals and some plants. Plaza's history has been 
carefully examined, and Acosta's sometimes referred to. Pub- 
lic documents were^upplied with exceeding kindness by those 
officers who had them in their power, both at Bogota and else- 
where. It is to be regretted that neither the Granadan legation 
in the United States, nor the consulate at New York, were able 
to add any thing to these stores collected abroad. 

Many individuals have kindly aided in promoting the accu- 
racy of the work, whose favors, though gratefully remembered, 
can not be enumerated here. To no North American does it 
owe more than to that gentleman, merchant, and scholar, Alex- 
ander I. Cotheal. Senor Julio Arboleda was never .applied to 
in vain. Senor Escipion Garcia-Herreros contributed some val- 
uable and elaborate observations on civil law, and a compen- 
dium of the history of the last attempt at revolution, both of 
which deserved a better fate than to be reduced to such mere ab- 
stracts as alone could find room in a volume of travels. 

But to no one individual, nor, indeed, to all others, does the 
work owe so much as to Senor Rafael Pombo, secretary of the 
Granadan legation. And this zeal was owing, not to a friend- 
ship to the author, to whom he was a stranger when his aid was 
first sought, but to a noble love for his country. May that 
country thank and reward him ; for his faithfulness, accuracy, 
promptness, and zeal transcend all mere thanks of mine. 



PREFACE. v ii 

It was a calamity that the hook was put in type at a time 
when Serior Pombo was absent from the country. The author's 
distance from the printers also tended to increase the number of 
verbal errors, which, notwithstanding an almost marvelous accu- 
racy on their part, will be noticed by the Spanish scholar. As 
most of these occur rightly spelled in the Appendix, it is hoped 
that they will not sensibly impair the utility of the book. The 
translation of the phrase Dominus vobiscum, the expressions 
Que entren para dentro, and Por siempre, are perhaps the most 
important not thus corrected. 

But there is another class of errors which no proof-reader can 
correct, and the number of which no one will ever know. So 
many are the motives for misleading the traveler — so many the 
errors that, once set down for truth, are never re-examined — 
that it can not be possible that this work shall be exempt from 
them. The indulgent reader will pardon them. 

The author claims of the publishers the right to make one 
more acknowledgment of obligation, and that is to themselves. 
The liberality with which they have acceded to every wish of 
his, involving outlays far beyond what was at first intended, is 
one of the most pleasing circumstances in the retrospect of the 
long and unremitted toil this day concluded. And if succeed- 
ing travelers shall find in the book that aid which the writer 
sought in vain, and the philanthropist shall feel his best sympa- 
thies aroused for one of the most liberal and free nations on the 
face of the globe, that toil will not be unrewarded. 

Middlebury College. October 15th, 1856. 



CONTENTS, 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUC TORY . 

A tropical Scene. — Position of Vijes. — Valley of the Magdalena. — The Cauca. 
— Seclusion of its Valley. — Aim of the Work. — Origin of Character. — Influ- 
ence of Latitude on Value of Time. — Effect of Altitude on Temperature.— 
Religious Monopoly. — Ancestry. — Language. — Plan of the Work Page 1,7 

CHAPTER n. 

SABANILLA. 

First View of New Granada. — Perpetual Snow. — Rio Hacha. — Goajiro Indians, 
— Santa Marta. — Mouth of the Magdalena. — A Native. — Port Officers, and the 
Passenger without a Passport. — Sabanilla School. — Collecting the Revenue. — 
Rotation in Office 23 

CHAPTER III. 

BARRANQUILLA. 

Ride to Barranquilla. — First Spot in the Tropics. — Lizards. — Mail-carrier.- — 
Town. — Government of New Granada. — Governor. — Prison. — Church. — Boat 
Expedition. — Bongo. — Poling. — A Night with Bogas and Musquitoes. — Cana 
de la Pina. — Harbor of Sabanilla 3 J 

CHAPTER TV. 

CARTAGENA. 

Entrance to a splendid Harbor. — A walled City and a finished City. — Consul 
Sanchez. — Mule Travel. — La Popa. — Turbaco. — Arjona. — The Dique. — Ma- 
hates. — How the Duke did a Yankee. — Calamar. — A Dance 42 

CHAPTER V. 

THE MAGDALENA STEAMER. 

Steam on the Magdalena. — The Barranquilla. — Mouth of the Cauca. — Lady Pas- 
senger left. — Houses. — Bogas and their Women. — Banco and its Ants. — Its 
Priest as industrious. — Puerto Nacional. — Fertility of Ichthyophagi. — San Pa- 
blo. — An opening for Practice. — Water-drinking and Drinking-water. — Geog- 
raphy. — Geographer lost in the Woods. — On a Sand-bar. 54 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE CHAMPAN. 

Bogas. — Farewell to Steam. — Trying to be "down sick." — The Hammock. — 
Our Prison. — On short Allowance. — Plank-making. — Platanal. — Chocolate. — 
Buena Vista. — On Shore 7S 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER VII. 

HONDA AND GUADUAS. 

Bodega and Bodeguero.— Crusoe's Long-boat.— Men of Burden.— Wonderful 
Bridge. — Municipal Suicide. — Salt. — A universal Swim. — A petrified 
City.— Pescaderias. — Passive Obedience to Mules. — Rural Breakfast. — Fare- 
well to the River.— Mr. Wm. Gooding.— Col. Joaquin Acosta.— The Guadua. 
— Sunday Market.— Mass. — Cemetery.— Fountain.— Salutations Page 91 

CHAPTER VIII. 

PLAIN OF BOGOTA. 

The Negress Francisca. — Ups and Downs. — Venta at Cuni, and Sausage there. 
— Villeta. — Great Tertulia and hard Lodgings. — Excelsior. — The Plain. — 
Traditions. — Fences. — The Orejon. — Battle-fields.— Market-people.— Fonti- 
bon. — Entrance to Bogota 116 

CHAPTER EX. 

POSADA AT BOGOTA. 

A House at Bogota. — Servants. — Abnormal Cookery. — A Visit to the Kitchen . 
— A Discovery. — Sickness. — Rooms and Furniture. — Food and Fruits. — A 
Love Affair 137 

CHAPTER X. 

BOGOTA. 

Streets of Bogota. — Plan of the City. — Plazas. — Public Buildings. — Library. — 
Museum. — Observatory. — Preparations for Execution. — Cemeteries. — Plaza 
de los Martires. — Mode of Execution. — Victims of Morillo 152 

CHAPTER XI. 

FOREIGNERS IN BOGOTA. 

Legations in Bogota. — Our System. — Mr. King. — Mr. Green. — Mr. Bennet. — 
British and French Legations. — Venezuelan. — Legate of the Pope. — Spanish 
Obstinacy. — Granadan Courtesy. — Naturalization 165 

CHAPTER XII. 

THE BOGOTANOS. 

Houses. — Smoking. — Dinner at the Palace. — Coreographic Commission. — Low- 
er Orders. — Market and Marketing. — Lesson in Spanish 170 

chapter xrn. 

RELIGION AND CHURCHES OF BOGOTA. 

Doctrines of the Romish Church. — Miraculous Birth of Christ. — Baptism. — Re- 
lation of God-parents. — Confirmation. — Communion. — Rosary and Crown. — 
Family Worship. — Vespers. — Neglect of Religion 180 

CHAPTER XIV. 

CHURCHES OF BOGOTA. 

The City of Churches. — Clocks. — Advocaciones. — Les Nieves. — Bells. — Ara. — 
Nude Saints. — La Tercera. — Flagellation. — San Francisco. — Santo Domingo. 
— Clerical Dress. — Cathedral. — San Agustin. — Nunneries 18.") 



I 



CONTENTS. xi 



CHAPTEE XV. 

PARAMO AND POLITICS. 

Dancing. — Mules, Bulls, and Horses. — Quesada, the Conqueror. — Bolivar and 
Santander. — Colombia : its Rise, History, and Disruption. — One or two Re- 
bellions. — Heroic and frail Woman. — Hail Page 200 

CHAPTER XVI. 

MONTSERRATE AND THE BOQUERON. 

Aqueduct. — Bathing Excursion. — Houses not Homes. — Quinta of Bolivar. — Hill 
Difficulty, and a Way of doubtful Holiness. — Chapel. — Perpetual Snow. — 
Some nice Plants. — A cold Region and its Inhabitants. — The Boqueron. — 
Leneras. — Scarcity of Wood 211 

CHAPTER XVII. 

THE PRISON, THE HOSPITAL, THE GRAVE. 

Guadalupe. — Discomfited Saint. — Boqueron and bathing Girls. — Miracle-work- 
ing Image. — Fuel-girl and Babe.— Powder-mill and Magazine. — Soldiers.— 
Cemeteries. — Day of Mourning. — Potter's-fields. — Gallinazo. — Hospital. — 
Doctors and Apothecaries. — Provincial Prison 222 

CHAPTER XVHI. 

THE VALLEY OF THE ORINOCO. 

Hydrography. — Paramo of Choachi. — Cordillera of Bogota and the Provinces on 
its Summit. — ■ Eastern Wilderness. — Thermal Springs. — Indian Reserves. — 
Fortunate Priest. — His cunning Penitent. — Cordage Plant. — Laguna Grande. 
— Hid Treasures. — Murder of the Chibcha King. — Senor Quevedo. — Bolivar. 
— Joaquin Mosquera. — Rafael Urdaneta. — Domingo Caicedo. — Jose Maria 
Obando. — Francisco de Paulo Santander. — Six Administrations and three Re- 
bellions. — Murder and Mystery. — Sucre, Sarda, and Mariano Paris. — Une. — 
Paramo of Cruz Verde. — Rare Plants 235 



*» 



CHAPTER XLX. 

CONGRESS, CONSTITUTIONS, INSTITUTIONS, AND WEATHER. 

Congress Halls. — Opening of Congress. — Audience. — Constitutions of 1843 and 
1853. — Defect of the latter. — Finances. — Descentralizacion. — Mint. — Mails. 
— Provincial Schools. — Colegio Militar. — Observatory. — Caldas. — Hoyo del 
Aire. — Schools and Studies. — Manufactories. — The dependent Classes. — 
Weather, Temperature, etc., of Bogota 256 

CHAPTER XX. 

THE FALLS OP TEQUENDAMA. 

Leaving Bogota. — Mule-hunting. — Soacha. — Agriculture at Tequendama.— 
Course of the River. — Description of the Falls. — Comparison of Cataracts.— 
Photographic View. — Mist Theory. — Tree-ferns. — Haciendas of Cincha and 
Tequendama. — Saw-mill and Quinine Factory. — Sabbath Reading 272 



xii CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XXL 

BALLS AND BULLS. 

Cibate. — Priest traveling. — Spinning. — Yoking Cattle. — President traveling. — 
Perpetual Rain. — Riding a la Turque advocated. — Carguero and Babe. — Sleep- 
ing in slippery Places. — Unnecessary Ascent. — Balls. — Bull-feasts. — Open 
Prison. — A Walk. — Rich Gardens, unfortunate Statesman, and frail Poetesr . 
— Snails' Eggs. — Masquerades and April-fools. — Gambling. — Dr. Blagborne's 
Family. — Little Alice . Page 287 

CHAPTER XXII. 

THE BRIDGE OF PANDI. 

Hacienda del Retiro. — Slow Horse. — Probable Origin of the Bridge. — Humble 
Posada. — Bad Priests. — The Bridge. — Cemetery of Pandi. — District Prison. 
— A warm Walk and cold Ride. — Dull Horse and fragile Sticks. — Problem 
of Achilles and the Tortoise exemplified 308 

CHAPTER XXin. 

IBAGUE. 

Sugar-mill. — Boqueron. — Eerry over the Suma Paz. — Melgar. — Immersion. — 
Custard by a Chemist. — A Ford. — Inquisitiveness. — Equivocal Generation. — 
Crossing the Magdalena. — Strait and narrow Way. — Espinal. — Live Snake. — 
Late Breakfast. — Conscience at a Ferry. — League.- — Schools, Books, and Stud- 
ies. — The Priest and the Cock-pit. — Extreme Unction, Coffin, and Grave. — 
Provincial Paper. — Blockhead Legislators. — Taxation. — Legislative Asse i: 
nearer Home 31-1 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE BACK TRACK. 

A Crash Towel. — Excellent Family. — A Granadan Ghost. — Piedras. — How to ex- 
tinguish a Cigar. — Rio Seco. — Drowning in Dry River. — Neme and Bitumen. — 
Sulphur Water and something stronger. — Granadan drunk and noisy. — Tocai- 
ma. — Sky-roofed Prison. — Fall of Horses. — Juntas de Apulo. — Muddy Rivera 
and muddy Roads. — Anapoima. — Mesa. — Road round a Hill. — Presidio.- — 
Hospital. — Surveillance. — Volcan.- — School Examination. — Tertulia. — Expe- 
dition to Tequendama. — The Laggards. — Tena. — A cool Drink. — A Fast. — 
Affectionate Reception 338 

CHAPTER XXV. 

CROSSING THE QUINDIO MOUNTAINS. 

The Party. — Early Start. — Late Dinner. — Sulphur Mine. — Hot Springs. — The 
Presidio. — An Accident. — Cold Night. — I love my Neighbor, and she loves 
hers. — Twice-told Tale. — Boquia. — Balsa. — Ranchos. — Cartago. — Ball. ■ — 
Prisoner set free. — The Drama in open Air 354 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

A CAUCAN FAMILY. 

Scheme for Revealing and Concealing. — Introduction to the Family. — House in 
Cartago. — Bad Ear-ache and Ball. — How to go to Bed. — Water-boys. — Fleas. 



CONTENTS. x iii 

— Horsemanship. — Using a Hacienda as an Inn. — A Peasant Liar. — La Ca- 
bana. — An ugly Hole in the Dark Page 379 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

ROLDANILLO AND LAW. 

A Gentleman Liar. — Pleasant Family. — A nice Swim. — Over the Cauca. — Rich 
Family and few Comforts. — La Mona. — Sabbath Eve. — Roldanillo. — Good 
Priest. — Select School. — Church Organ. — Law. — Superiority of our System. — 
Incredulous Priest. — Civil Suits. — A queer Fruit. — Swimming the Cauca.. 393 

CHAPTER XXVHI. 

GEAZIEK LIFE. 

Libraida. — Priest. — Partial Hospitality. — Impediment to Church-going. — Noon- 
day-ball. — The Priest's Partner. — Utility of Hurrahs. — Dinner. — Duck- 
pulling. — Beheading Cocks. — A Spring. — A Ride with Company. — La 
Paila. — Mortmain and ecclesiastical Incumbrances. — Herding. — The Lazo. 
— Colt-breaking. — Breeding of Colts and Mules. — The Bull-fishery. — Bull- 
driving 412 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

GRAZIER SPORTS. 

Cara-perro and Grass-climbing. — Virgin Forest. — Manifest Destiny. — Cienega 
de Burro. — A Burial. — Rogacion. — Niguas in Church. — Neglect of the Sick. 
— Rejoicing over the Dead. — Distilling. — Election. — What is in a Name ? — 
San Juan. — Bride's Dress. — A Swim. — Murillo. — Overo. — Buga-la-Grande. — 
Woods in the Night. — Advantage of a Guide.. 434 

CHAPTER XXX. 

THE GEAZIEK AT HOME. 

House-building of Guadua, Mud, and Thatch. — Plan of House. — Servants. — Ab- 
lutions. — Breakfast. — The Dairy. — Dinner. — A Sabbath. — Baptism. — Mar- 
riage. — Dinner and Ball. — Drinking without Drunkenness. — The Bundi. — 
Carrying home the Girls. — A Love Affair. — Lay Baptism. — Lying. — A Week's 
Sickness. — Diet. — Monkey and Fowl. — Slaughter of Beef. — Turtles. — Agricul- 
ture. — Prices. — Fertility and Poverty : Abundance and Hunger 463 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

THE PASTURES IN THE FOREST.. 

Sudden Start. — Wardrobe for the Woods. — Plan and Company. — Barleycorn 
Boldness. — Night in Woods and Rain. — Departed Spirits. — El Chorro. — 
Thermometer broken. — A Countiy all aslant. — Las Playas. — Rancho of 
Century-plant. — Substitute for Cords. — Jicaramata. — Guavito. — Threat of 
Famine. — Sabbath-day's Journey. — Routed by Hunger. — Snakes. — Treasure- 
hunting 489 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

BUGA AND PALMIRA. 

Rice-fields. — Mud-holes. — San Pedro. — Buga. — Another Horse Story. — Zonza, 
the Beautiful. — Rio Guaves. — Cerrito. — Church. — Care of Toes in School. — 



xiv CONTENTS. 

Herran Administration. — Constitution of 1843. — Mosquera Administration. — 
Water-mill for Cane. — Poor rich Family. — Irish. Gentleman and Granadan 
Wife. — How to spoil a Dinner. — Palmira. — Pull Jail. — Arithmetic. — A Fast. 
— LL.D.'s turned Traders. — Cockroach Story. — Mud, Palms, and Indigenous 
Cacao. — Perry Page 500 

CHAPTER XXXIH. 

CALI AND VIJES. 

Cali. — Church built of old Clothes. — A Priest making Jews. — Rare Flower and 
miraculous Image. — North American in the Hospital. — Schools. — Weaving. 
— Sounds familiar. — Funeral. — Celebration of a Party Triumph. — Election of 
Lopez. — A Turn northward. — A fine Bridge. — Yumbo. — Copper cheaper than 
Iron. — San Marcos. — Route to the Pacific. — Copper Mine. — Gold Mining and 
Washing. — Comb Manufactory. — Maladministration in the Cauca. — Lands in 
common. — Our Priest : his Eloquence and Morals. — Visit to a Hermit. — He- 
roic Eating. — Espinal. — Bolivia. — Pretty Child. — Locating Road. — Fence of 
Cornstalks. — Railroad to the Pacific. — Defective Government. — Constitution 
of 1853. — Finances. — Protection of Vagabonds. — The Granadinos are a ruornl 
People 5] ■> 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

SUPPLEMENTARY. 

Date of Crucifixion. — Lent. — The purple Curtain. — Blessing Palm-leaves. — 
Ass in Church. — Pasos. — Nazarenos. — La Resena. — White Curtain rent. — 
A speaking Trumpet. — Lamentations. — Monumentos. — Good Friday. — Great 
Curtain Rent on Saturday. — Paschal Sunday. — Resurrection Scene. — Oui 
Bono ? — A Revolution possible. — A Murder. — Bochinche of Good Friday. — 
Coup d'etat. — Scenes at the Palace. — Constitution abolished. — Invasion of 
Honda and Mesa. — American Legation stormed. — Battle of Cipaquira. — Af- 
fairs of the Cauca. — Surprise at Guaduas. — Scaling Tequendama with Can- 
non.— Battle of Boza. — Storming of Bogota. — Fall of Melo. — The next Pres- 
ident 543 



• APPENDIX. 

Page 

I. Glossary '.... 560 

II. Observations on the Maps 573 

HI. Geographical Index 574 

IV. Alphabetical List of Places in New Granada 575 

V. Mail Routes...., 584 

VI. Geological Section 585 

VII. Altitudes, Climates, and Productions 588 

VIII. Itinerary 592 

LX. Chronological Table 593 

X. Weights and Measures 595 

XI. Analytical Index 597 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGE 

Map of New Granada to face Title. 

Map of Climates to face page 587 

Fustic-cutter's Family... 59 

Ivory-nut Plant 70 

The Champan 80 

TheOrejon 132 

Indians going to Market 136 

Casa Claustrada 139 

Plan of Bogota . 153 

Street and Cathedral in Bogota 156 

Foundling-wheel 163 

Habit of the Jesuits 193 

Votive Offerings 225 

Foot-soldier and Lancer 228 

Alpargate or Alpargata 236 

Biding in a Sillon 240 

Bogotanos at Choachi 244 

Falls of Tequendama 281 

Priest on a Journey 288 

Carguero and Babe 292 

The Bull-feast 298 

Girl with Goitre : 320 

Rubrica 326 

A Coffin 329 

Inscriptions on Stones near Toche 362 

Silleros in the Quindio 364 

Fashionable Riding-dress 381 

Water-boy at Cartago 386 

The Vaquero 426 

TheLazo 426 

Domestic Still 448 

The Grazier's Home 464 

Church at Cerrito 506 

Geological Section 587 

Chart of Altitudes and Productions 589 



ERRATA. 

Page 37, line 3, for two, read twenty-two. 
Page 117, line 37, for Losa. read Loras. 
Page 273, line 5, add, This was Boza. 
Page 529, line 2%, for Candelaria, read Caloto. 



OW GKANADA. 

CHAPTER I. 

INTEODUCTOEY. 

A tropical Scene. — Position of Vijes. — Valley of the Magdalena. — The Cauea. 
— Seclusion of its Valley. — Aim of the Work. — Origin of Character. — Influ- 
ence of Latitude on Value of Time. — Effect of Altitude on Temperature. — 
Keligious Monopoly. — Ancestry. — Language. — Plan of the Work. 

I haye just come up from a refreshing dip in the cool mount- 
ain stream, and have thrown myself leisurely on the rude and 
not too clean hank of earth and stone that forms a seat along 
the front of the lime-burner's hut, under the piazza. 

Here sits the tenant of the cottage on a large fragment of 
rock, destined some day for the fire, shaping a section of the 
stem of a bush into a wooden spoon. He uses for this the uni- 
versal tool, the machete — a knife about twenty inches long, that 
the peasant rarely fails to have in a sheath belted to his waist. 

His little girl has slipped on her camisa, perhaps the only 
garment that she possesses, in honor of my coming. The little 
monkey has hardly improved her appearance by the operation ; 
for the garment, though not so black as her skin, is infinitely 
inferior to it in cleanliness. She is doing as her father does, 
and has taken a large piece of wood, and is busy, with a dull 
case-knife that has lost its handle of horn, hacking at random, 
to make, as she tells me, a spoon. 

The older daughter and her mother are busy at a little fire 
built at one end of the piazza. They are broiling some rather 
suspicious-looking pieces of beef, and roasting peeled plantains, 
for the family lunch, which the laboring class convert into a 
frugal noonday meal whenever they have the means at hand. 
The little boy, undisfigured by clothes or dirt, is busy investi- 

B 



18 NEW GRANADA. 

gating the foreigner, but at the same time seems to have a spe- 
cial anticipatory interest in the operations of his mother. 

We are a little higher than the point of a triangular plain 
that spreads out eastward to the river. The western angle, near 
us, is occupied by a village of huts, some of which merit the 
name of houses, arranged around the Plaza, or public square, 
that is almost never wanting from a Granadan village. The 
little stream in which I have been bathing receives, just below, a 
tributary from a gorge at my left, skirts the village on the north, 
having also a dozen or more houses on its left bank, makes its 
way among cane-fields, plantain-patches, uncultivated lands and 
forest for a mile or two, and loses itself in the yellow current of 
the river, and hurries off to the north to reach the Caribbean 
Sea. That river is the Cauca, and the village is Vijes. 

Beyond the river are low lands covered with forest, and in the 
farthest east the blue summits of the Quindio Mountains, which 
separate this most secluded valley from that of the Magdalena. 

The nook of Vijes is separated from the rest of the world by 
the river and forest on the east, and on all other sides by a high 
range of steep rocky hills, with grass-covered sides, and crown- 
ed at the summit with dense forest. Over these the road down 
the river from the south climbs in laborious zigzags, or quin- 
gos, as they call them, while, proceeding down the river, it finds 
room to squeeze itself in between the hill and the river, or, when 
hard pressed, climbs along the steep side to pass a difficulty and 
to descend again. I used the word road, but I fear it will mis- 
lead the reader : a road might imply travelers — might be under- 
stood to mean a path on which two mules could always pass 
each other. The word trail would better convey the idea to a 
Western man. 

All this scene lies before us now, owing to the slight eleva- 
tion of the flat spot in the gorge of the hills where this hut 
stands. It is bathed in the brilliant but not burning rays of a 
vertical sun — a scene of quiet beauty, so far out of the way of 
travel that'probably not an eye that reads these lines has seen, 
or will ever see, the original that I am trying to delineate. 

And why shall I not commence, here and now, those random 
sketches that I have so long been promising my friends ? Well, 
this shall be the beginning. 



THE CAUCA VALLEY. 19 

Now let me fix the geography of the place I am dating from. 
New Granada occupies the northwest corner of South America, 
and extends from a little north of the Isthmus of Panama to 
the neighborhood of the equator. It is the central fragment of 
the three into which Colombia was divided in 1830, and com- 
prises one half of the whole. 

The Pacific receives no large river from South America. The 
Atlantic receives most of the water from New Granada through 
the Amazon, Orinoco, Magdalena, and Atrato. Nine tenths of 
the population live on the Magdalena and its tributaries. Of 
these the Cauca is by far the largest. This and the Magdalena 
flow northward for many hundreds of miles in valleys parallel 
to each other, having between them the Quindio Mountains. 

It will best suit us to view the Cauca as having its origin in 
the lofty and cold regions between the provinces of Popayan 
and Pasto. From the volcano of Purace, southeast of the an- 
cient town of Popayan, flows • a stream ■ that justly merits the 
name of Bio Yinagre, as ten thousand parts of its waters contain 
eleven of sulphuric acid and nine of hydrochloric, or one part in 
five hundred of pure acid. Even after turning directly north, 
and taking the name of the Cauca, no fish can live in its sour 
waters for leagues. Farther down it enters a broader valley, and 
becomes a quiet but turbid navigable river, lined always on its 
right bank, and often on both, by muddy and tangled forest. 
Thus the considerable towns of Palmira and Cali, which are 
opposite each other, and eighteen miles apart, are at quite a dis- 
tance from the river, Palmira on the left banda, or side, and Cali 
on the right. The word banda, then, is not equivalent to bank, 
for it embraces a space much farther from the water. 

Soon after passing Cali the western hills crowd down to the 
river, and in a nook of them lies Vijes, with its fertile, half-cul- 
tivated plain, and limpid, babbling brook. Farther down are 
Buga and Cartago, both east of the river, and lastly old Antio- 
quia ; but here the river has begun to form a series of rapids, 
becoming more violent below, as it plunges into gorges where no 
road nor foot-path can follow it, and shuts out all hope of com- 
merce here finding an outlet either by land or water, by steam- 
boat or rail-road, by canoe or pack-mule. 

At last comes a pause in the rapid career of the Cauca when 



20 NEW GKANADA. 

it has nearly reached the level of the sea, and it turns northeast, 
and joins its turbid stream with the turbid stream of the Mag- 
dalena, and both proceed north to the sea. But the lower nav- 
igable portion of the river has no neighborhood with the upper. 
No man goes down there to see his friends, buy goods, or sell 
his produce. 

The natural outlet for the commerce of this fertile valley, then, 
is forever closed. What are its substitutes ? First, the pestif- 
erous sea-port of Buenaventura, on the Pacific, lying just west 
of Vijes. The land roads to Buenaventura terminate at Jun- 
tas, at the forks of the Dagua, from whence there is tolerable 
navigation when the river is not too high or too low. He that 
comes down to Juntas from the Cauca probably will find no 
boats, and can go no farther by land. He that comes up from 
Buenaventura may find no mules, and can go no farther by wa- 
ter. There may be a detention of a week at Juntas in either 
case. Hence Buenaventura has no commerce, and even the 
steamers that run down the Pacific coast from Panama do not 
stop there. The shortest road from Bogota to Buenaventura 
is to leave the principal road of the Cauca at a point east of Vi- 
jes, cross the river by a private ferry, and begin to scale the 
Western Cordillera by a crazy path from this very spot. Three 
or four hours of terrible climbing will bring you to where little 
streams are running toward the Pacific. 

The other outlet to the scanty trade of the valley is over the 
Quindio Mountains. About ten days' packing, in the best of 
weather, brings it to the Magdalena, two miles below Honda ; 
but if it would reach the port of Cartagena, it must be by a far- 
ther mule carriage from Calamar of 65 miles, a distance more 
than twice as great as from here to Juntas. Was there ever, 
then, such an out-of-the-way place ? Must not human life and 
human nature, though essentially the same in Labrador and 
Guinea, exhibit here some very unique and singular phases ? 
We shall see. 

Human nature is indeed every where the same in its essence, 
but infinitely diversified by the modifying power of external cir- 
cumstances. Unlike instinct, that scarcely yields to the strong- 
est influences, human nature bears the impress of the slightest 
inappreciable perturbing forces. Ancestry, soil, climate, occu- 



SECLUSION OF THE VALLEY. 21 

pation, bodily constitution, all have their power. But almost 
every where all these are borne down and modified, if not neu- 
tralized, by the resistless power of the great world of European 
civilization, which circulates through all the arteries of travel, 
so that the most minute ramifications receive their share. So 
the traveler who would study the power of local influences on 
men must go where travelers are not wont to go, nor foreign 
influences to penetrate. He must set himself leisurely down in 
a foreign land, with a foreign language, a foreign climate, a for- 
eign religion, a foreign and local literature and commerce, or none 
at all. 

Such study does Vijes afford to the Anglo-American and Prot- 
estant. He comes from a scene where life is a battle, a truce- 
less warfare with adversity and competition, and where not even 
the dead can rest in peace unless deposited where commerce will 
locate no new railroad, or health and convenience demand no 
new street. He comes where winter can never overtake the 
sluggard, where the maxims of Poor Richard have never been 
heard of, where it is cheaper to make a field than defend a law- 
suit, and easier to raise a new baby than cure a sick one ; and 
where even the sacred office is a quiet monopoly, undisturbed by 
the severe but salutary strifes which arise from planting two or 
three doctors and two or three churches in the same village. 

Here, then, let us observe dispassionately what is before our 
eyes, trace effects back to their causes, and estimate the various 
moral forces that have for their resultant the Granadan character. 
I will try to serve you as the eye serves the body, by laying be- 
fore you pictures of the fidelity of which you shall have no rea- 
son to doubt ; and if I ever draw any conclusions for you, it will 
not be because some superior sagacity is needed to arrive at 
them, but rather because they are too obvious to be ignored. 

Vijes (or Biges, for the orthography is uncertain) has a lati- 
tude of about 3° 45' N., so you may consider it situated on 
the equator. The sun ought therefore to set at six invariably ; 
but as it always goes into the clouds when it is about an hour 
high, the people make no account of it afterward. They say the 
sun " goes in" about five, but never speak of its setting. Twi- 
light ends between half past six and seven, so it appears quite 
like a natural sunset at about five ; and no one notices whether 



22 NEW GRANADA. 

the sun is vertical or not at noon ; so that all the diversities 
that you derive from the annual changes of the sun's declination 
are unknown here. It may be that even this has its hearing on 
character. Let a man with us lose a day by the high water, 
or by the negligence of an attendant, and if he feels that winter 
is approaching, or spring coming on, or any other season what- 
ever, he grows desperate ; but a Granadino sees day after day 
run away like so much Croton water, without concern, for there 
is an indefinite quantity of the same yet to come. The entire 
absence of clocks and watches aids this illusion. I do not know 
that in the entire population of this little triangle (1160) there 
is one of either. Nor is the want much felt. Things go on well 
enough without. What an absurdity to measure the time a man 
works, when you are only concerned in the amount of work he 
does ! Some surgeons are wont to cut off arms and legs by the 
watch, but I never yet heard it proposed to pay them by the 
minute. 

"We are at an altitude of about 3540 feet above the ocean.. 
This is below the lowest limit of wheat and the potato. In the 
rare instances in which we see potatoes or bread, they result from 
trade with higher lands, where the sugar-cane can not be culti- 
vated, and perhaps not even maize. We can do very well with- 
out their wheat and potatoes, but they need the product of the 
cane both for food and drink ; so a commerce between the cold 
lands and the warm is inevitable. 

I know of no reason that our valley should be colder for being 
higher, unless it is that a greater thickness of the crust of the 
earth separates us from the central fires ; but the fact can not 
be questioned. Select a beautiful day in the beginning of June 
in New York, and correspondingly earlier for any point south, 
and it will show you all the variation to which the thermometer 
is exposed in this paradise in all the year. To come to figures, 
the lowest I have ever seen it is 65°, and the highest is 86°, 
with one exception of 89°. But the heat of such a day is more 
supportable here than there, for we have only about ten hours 
of sunshine, preceded and followed by deliciously cool nights. 

The weather affects national character, directly by means of 
dress, and indirectly through agricultural products. The most 
important of them in this respect is the platano, which, with bad 



COMPETITION IN RELIGION. 23 

taste, we represent by the English word plantain. The plantain' 
saves man more labor than steam. It gives him the greatest 
amount of food from a given piece of ground, and with a labor so 
small that that of raising it to the mouth after roasting is a ma- 
terial part of it. " New Granada would be something," says 
my neighbor Caldas, "if we could exterminate the platano and 
the cane : this is the parent of drunkenness, that of idleness." 

But among all the influences of which we are to trace the ef- 
fects, none is more powerful and widespread than that of relig- 
ion. I must deal with this tenderly ; for I am a Protestant, 
and may be suspected of hostility to the Romish religion in it- 
self. Still, I ought to speak about it honestly, whether I incur 
suspicion or not ; but my theological objections to it as a re- 
ligion of forms are distinct from my political ones as a monopoly 
of worship. True it is, that by law this monopoly, which has 
continued since the first Spaniard entered the country, ceased on 
the 30th of August, 1853, but, in effect, it must continue till 
other churches have been brought into competition with that 
hitherto established by law, and, till lately, the only one tolerated. 
You must be prepared, then, to find the priests here much worse 
than in Ireland and Germany, where competition insures a bet- 
ter article, and still less can they compare with those of the 
United States, which are to the mass of Catholic clergy as the 
apples in a prize exhibition are to those of our ordinary or- 
chards. 

In speaking of the influences of climate, I should have alluded 
to the common impression that the passions of the inhabitants 
of the torrid zone are much more violent than those of northern 
races. Nothing could be more untrue and more improbable than 
that the blood should flow in fiercer torrents through the veins 
of the languid sons of the tropics than in our own. All the dif- 
ference in morality is more than explained by the influence of 
priestly example, vows of celibacy, and the confessional, and by 
the want of restraint either from conscience or public opinion. 

The remaining influences that modify character here are less 
in amount perhaps, but still appreciable. Ancestry, or principles 
and habits handed down from father to son, hold perhaps the 
next place ; and the ancestry of this people has been peculiar. 
I am constrained to admit that the Conquerors, as they here style 



24 NEW GRANADA. 

the first Spanish invaders, were a sanguinary and remorseless 
race. The best families retain this blood nearly pure, but it is 
only on rare and terrible occasions that the ancient ferocity 
comes to light in some popular outbreak. The remaining classes 
present all possible variations between the white, the negro, and 
the aboriginal; only this last element is scarcer here than in 
any other part of New Granada, probably because the conquer- 
ors treated the Indians with more severity here than any where 
else. They found the valley tenfold more populous perhaps 
than it now is ; and what did they do with all the inhabitants ? 
I dare not try to answer this question. Both the Indians and 
the negroes were of a mild, loving character, and if the negro el- 
ement has survived the Indian, it may be because they had to 
buy the negroes, where the Indians cost them nothing but the 
catching, like the dodo of the Indian Isles. 

To make the isolation of this valley the more complete and 
impassable, its beautiful language, the Spanish, bears the same 
relation to the principal European tongues that an island does 
to a continent. An uneducated man may get along very well 
with one language, provided that be German, English, or French ; 
but to be limited to the Spanish, a language remarkably deficient 
in periodical literature, in original books, and in translations, is 
to be cut off from the world by a wall of circumvallation. 

Such is the country we have for our study ; but what course 
shall our investigations take ? The worst, perhaps, would be the 
form of a diary, passing repeatedly over the same ground, and 
detailing such things as strike the traveler's fancy. Such a 
work is easy of execution, amuses as well as any other, but does 
not so well subserve the purposes for which travels are general- 
ly read. I would much prefer the analytic method of Tschudi, 
discarding entirely all relations of time, and giving the results 
in a purely geographical treatise ; but I distrust my powers to 
make such a work interesting, even if readable. I choose, there- 
fore, a middle course. If it is necessary for any one to be pre- 
cise about dates, and the order of time, or the number of times 
of visiting such and such places, let him consult the itinerary in 
the appendix ; if not, let him confide himself to the writer, who 
will bring him here over a way that he might have come. 

One word farther as to the persons that will figure in the nar- 



PLAN AND AIM. 25 

rative. It has been the custom of some English travelers in 
Spanish countries to take great liberties with the characters and 
circumstances of their hosts. One, for instance, after dining 
with a former bishop of Popayan, not only speaks with due com- 
mendation of the bishop's wine, but also the beauty of the bish- 
op's mistress ! To avoid a practice that hardly comports with 
my notions of hospitality, without, at the same time, depriving 
my readers of my most accurate and reliable observations, I shall 
sometimes change the names of persons where I have to say 
something disagreeable of them. And if, through the officious- 
ness of any meddler, any frailty of a man whose bread (platano) 
I have eaten shall become more widely known, I protest that it 
shall not have been by any legitimate use of my book, and that 
I would sooner have suppressed a dozen facts than that one 
should be thus dishonorably used. For the rest, I trust to dif- 
ference of language, distance, seclusion, and my honest artifices 
to cover, like the cloak of charity, a multitude of sins. 

But, farther, fiction has no place here, I have been eye-wit- 
ness of all the things that I profess to have seen, and, from re- 
spect for the reader, as well as for truth's sake, I will never tam- 
per with facts. 



CHAPTER II. 

SABANILLA. 

First View of New Granada. — Perpetual Snow. — Eio Hacha. — Goajiro Indians. 
— Santa Marta. — Mouth of the Magdalena. — A Native. — Port Officers, and the 

Passenger without a Passport. — Sabanilla School. — Collecting the Eevenue. 

Rotation in Office. 

My first view of New Granada was on the 21st of August, 
1852. You have here, good reader, one date on which you may 
rely ; remember it well : perhaps you may not get another in the 
whole book. The sun had not yet reached our horizon, even had 
there been no clouds in it, when the captain called out that there 
was land in sight. I did not believe him, but came out to con- 
firm with another observation the strange fact that some men 
will lie even when the truth would serve them equally well. 



26 NEW GRANADA. 

I doubted my eyes as much as I did the captain's words, so 
improbable was what I saw. Imagine a mass of the whitest 
clouds heaped one upon another in the south, tinged with a del- 
icate rose-color wherever the rays of the sun, yet unrisen on us, 
could reach them, while deep recesses in other places presented 
yet the obscurity of night. I look for one unsupported mass, 
some impossible crag for the captain to explain, but can not find 
one, and I begin to doubt his mendacity this once. 

True, it is not impossible that land should be in sight. Un- 
questionably we should see it were the horizon clear of clouds, 
an event we can never expect in the tropics. At a distance of 
50 or 100 miles from the coast the mountains are said to rise to 
the height of 24,000 feet, and, of course, are capped with perpet- 
ual snow, but what can they have to do with the unearthly spec- 
tacle before me? Once admit that it is but cloud that I see, 
and the vision takes its place among the sublimest sunrises I 
ever saw ; but call it earth, and Homer would scarce dare invent 
such an Olympus for his gods. 

A strange optical illusion still kept up my incredulity. These 
masses appeared to be towering up some 10 or 15 degrees, ris- 
ing out of the clouds resting on the sea at a point that we count 
the horizon, that is, where the sea disappears from view by rea- 
son of its convexity. I took a little sextant from my state-room 
to measure the altitude of the highest peak, and it gave me but 
3° 12'. Even this I doubted till confirmed by the captain's 
quadrant. 

But clouds are not so brief as morning views of snow-capped 
Andes. It is not on every voyage that this glorious sight is 
vouchsafed, and soon, too soon, the clouds shut it in forever. 

We were now sailing westward nearly parallel with the coast, 
and opposite us to the southeast was the province of Rio Hacha. 
Little communication by land has this province with the rest of 
the world. Around the base of these mountains lives a fierce tribe 
of unsubdued Indians, the Goajiros. When arms have failed 
against the savages, the Spaniards have been wont to resort to 
missionaries to subjugate them. Even these have failed with 
the Goajiros, who would make the priest load his own shoulders 
with the things his peons had brought, and thus conduct him to 
their borders. Still they treated with great kindness a lady who 



SANTA MARTA. 27 

was shipwrecked on her voyage from Maracaibo to Santa Marta, 
a Senora Gallego, if I recollect aright. I had hoped ere this to 
secure some letters from her detailing her adventures and the 
character of the Goajiros, Ibut now fear they will never meet the 
public eye. 

One curious custom of the Goajiros I suspect may have ex- 
tended to other tribes. A maternal uncle was counted a nearer 
relative than the father. The reason given by one of them was 
this : " The child of a man's wife may be his or it may not ; 
but beyond a peradventure the son of the daughter of his mother 
must be his nephew." I am inclined to think that in some na- 
tions of South American Indians, not only property, but also 
crowns, have descended according to this very unconfiding law. 

At length we are nearer shore, and now we can see land that 
looks like earth, and not like heaven; but it looks desolate 
enough. It seems to be a bare, dry ridge of mountain, without 
trees, herbage, water, or inhabitants. Why is it that we expect 
perpetual verdure in the tropics, and imagine that vegetation, 
which knows no other rest than from want of water, could pos- 
sibly attain the freshness of that which has just thrown off the 
weight of four months' snows, and has so much less time to get 
its year's growth in ? We are expecting impossibilities ; but 
he who approaches Santa Marta near the close of the dry sea- 
son, as we now do, with these notions, must be disappointed in- 
deed. 

After passing a point of land, we looked southeast, and at the 
bottom of a bay that serves for a roadstead rather than a har- 
bor, we saw Santa Marta. The Cathedral was distinctly visi- 
ble, rising from a mass of houses, but I had no nearer view. 

Nature seems to have denied the interior of New Granada 
any good outlet for commerce. The Santa Marta people think 
that there the coast is most accessible from Bogota, but I can 
not readily believe it. Occasionally the Magdalena steam-boats 
of the Santa Marta Company pass the bar of the river and the 
small space of open sea necessarily crossed to reach the town, 
and they say they do it without danger, but they rarely ven- 
ture it. 

The unfortunate traveler bound for Bogota, whose impatience 
leads him to leave his vessel at Santa Marta, has first some 



28 NEW GKANADA. 

leagues to go by land, then to take a canoe or small boat over 
ponds and through narrow channels, till he counts himself hap- 
py to reach Remolino. Brief happiness, if he finds no steamer 
there ! I have seen Eemolino, and should judge that a deten- 
tion there would be worse than a residence in one of our prisons 
in dog-days. The town, when I visited it, had been recently 
overflowed — no uncommon occurrence, I should judge, by the 
eight-inch dike that promises defense to the town from the 
river. 

Santa Marta, I am told, has no good harbor. Though shel- 
tered from the prevailing wind from the northeast, still ships 
will drag their anchors rather than face the gusts that come 
down the mountains back of the town. As for piers, where 
a ship may lie to discharge and take in freight, you must not 
expect such a thing in South America. 

At Santa Marta you leave the mountains, and at length, in 
following on west, you lose the land entirely if the weather is not 
very clear. After some hours, a fringe of bushes appears on 
your left, suggesting rather the idea of a submerged thicket 
than a shore. At length the ship enters muddy water — she is 
sailing across the mouth of the Magdalena. The fresh water, 
even when surcharged with mud, is lighter than sea-water, and 
floats on the surface ; but here may be seen a rare phenomenon. 
The tawny flood that is spreading over the top of the sea strikes 
against the south side of the vessel, but can not pass under. In 
place of it boils up clear sea-water on the north side. It re- 
mains unmixed with the fresh water so long as you can see it. 

Parti-colored water is a rare sight. He who has once well 
seen it at the mouth of the Missouri does not soon forget it. He 
wonders how it is possible for a visible distinction to remain so 
long between two rivers flowing in the same bed. The limpid 
Mississippi is quietly flowing south, when, of a sudden, the yel- 
low Missouri bursts in upon it like a race-horse, so that the 
muddy water seems to gain the centre of the river at a single 
bound. They boil into each other, still without mixing. Here 
you see far within the clear water a patch of mud, like a squad- 
ron of an adverse army far in advance of the main body of the 
attacking party ; there a piece of clear water refusing either to 
retreat or mix with the less pure masses around it, till you seem 



MOUTH OF THE MAGDALENA. 29 

to imagine a moral force within that keeps up the lines of dis- 
tinction so sharp and clear. 

Off the mouth of the Magdalena, the wonder would be invis- 
ible but for the intervention of the vessel. You are told that 
there is a flood beneath a flood, but you could see nothing did 
not the keel of the ship hold back the water of the river, to let 
that of the sea come up with the same shades of color, the same 
contrasts and well-defined lines, as in the Father of Waters. 

At' length there appears over the low trees a large white 
building. It is the custom-house (aduana) of Sabanilla. It 
gives you good hopes of the country to see so fine a building, 
for it appears, at least, good enough for a second-rate port in the 
United States. 

The flag of our Union is hoisted to call a pilot, and in due 
time a boat is seen approaching. It is something to see a new 
face after a voyage of twenty days ; but to see one of another 
race and nation in his own home, unaltered by travel, is enough 
to excite a deep interest in any one who is just beginning his 
foreign wanderings. The boat contained the pilot, his little 
son, and a negro. The pilot and his boy had on enough clothes, 
and dirty enough, but the negro was half naked, and of a stupid, 
vacant countenance. I could not refer the other two to any one 
of the five races of man, but it seemed as if three of them, at 
least, had contributed to the blood in their veins. 

Now the word is given, and the anchor is let go ! It is an 
event in a man's life, when, for weeks, he has been moving, with 
no visible object to mark his progress or fix his situation, whose 
ideas of locality have all been cooped into the space of a few 
yards, to find his ship, so long a world by itself, again part of 
the great world. Yes ; our position is fixed, and what we see 
now we shall see to-morrow in the same places. We are twen- 
ty or thirty rods from a shore that runs north and south along 
the foot of a low, green hill, covered with sparse woods. On 
that hill, southwest of us, is the pretentious, unoccupied custom- 
house, and at the foot a group of sheds, and a little wharf where 
boats can land ; there is none for ships. I ask for the town, 
and they show me a few acres of low flat land and low thatched 
roofs two miles south. There is Sabanilla, and the nearest resi- 
dences of men. 



30 NEW GEANADA. 

Scarcely had the anchor reached the bottom, when another 
boat approached, with a more numerous company of health-offi- 
cers and custom-house men. Contrary to all the predictions of 
the captain, they pronounced me free to go ashore when I liked. 
For a fortnight, no occasion had been lost of impressing on my 
mind that I was to be taken off the ship by a file of soldiers, 
carried to prison, kept there till the vessel was ready to leave, 
and then put aboard again. So much was the captain's mind 
exercised by this, that he declared he would never carry anoth- 
er passenger without seeing that his passport was in due form, 
and the first item of his report to the collector, of the contents 
of his ship, was, "One passenger without a passport." 

Meanwhile I strained my eyes shoreward to catch the first 
glimpses of tropical vegetation. I had indeed seen, in pass- 
ing before the mouth of the Magdalena, some stems of plantains, 
and masses of Pistia and Pontederia, detached from the low, 
marshy banks of the Magdalena ; but the curiosity excited by 
this earnest was in no way to be gratified by any thing yet vis- 
ible in the common-looking woods that lined the hill-side west 
of the harbor, the Nisperal. 

No sign of human labor was visible, save the showy custom- 
house and its attendant hovels, nearer than the dingy town. 
What could be the peculiar merits of the favored spot that at- 
tracted all the population away from the centre of business ? 
I was determined to see, and got into a boat that was going 
up tliere. I found it a piece of salt marsh, a few inches above 
high water, covered with one-story cottages, built of mud, and 
thatched with cat-tail flags — Typha. All of them appeared alike, 
made generally of two rooms, both adjoining the street, one only 
having an outside door. The unglazed windows, each covered 
with a grating, built out a little way into the street, the reja, 
gave it a dreary, prison-like aspect. These projecting rejas let 
out the head of the tenant, so as to see up and down the street. 
Occasionally they catch the head of the passer-by on a sharp 
corner, but not so often as I should expect. A salutary fear 
of this accident becomes habitual with him. 

The town of Sabanilla is as dense as any factory village, and 
as much more homely than they can be as mud and thatch is 
worse than brick and slate. Not a tree, bush, or weed is found 



SABANILLA. 31 

in the streets ; but a few steps brought me to an opening in a 
fence, where I pounced upon a bush in flower — the first green 
thing within reach of my hands. It was Laguncularia race- 
mosa, a common Antillan Combretate shrub. I fell at once to 
dissecting its peculiar fruit. It left a permanent mark on my 
bright new knife from its corrosive juice. 

A little farther on I saw the papaya — Carica Papaya — well 
translated by the word papaw. Unfortunately, we have applied 
the name to a very different plant, the Asiminia triloba, that has 
nothing in common with the true papaw. The branchless tree, 
ten feet high, with the flowers, often unisexual, clustered about 
the summit of the almost hollow stem, is at once recognized by 
any one who has a previous idea of this peculiar genus. I find 
there are other species of them, but if any of them have the 
strange property of making meat tender, it is unsuspected here. 
I found later a Jamaica gentleman, who " knew of a man" who 
used the leaves to pack meat in for this purpose, but I would 
like to see the matter made the subject of scientific experiment. 

The next thing that caught my eye was huge Cactate stems, 
on the sand-hill back of the town. They are triangular, and 
ten feet high. I have never found flowers on them, but one of 
them must be the famous night-blooming Cereus grandiflorus, 
or an allied species. 

It seems as if all the houses or huts of Sabanilla might be 
taverns or stores. A remarkable prevalence of bottles and ab- 
sence of casks strikes you on entering the stores. The first 
place I went into was a large, almost vacant room, the house, 
perhaps, of some custom-house officer. I saw an object on the 
floor that I took for a large monkey at the first glance, but, to 
my disgust, a second view showed it to be a baby, naked, and 
of the precise color of the earth of the floor on which it was 
crawling. A similar specimen of the same species I saw in an- 
other house swinging in a hammock, a piece of dry hide being 
placed under the child. 

The next house I entered was formally "placed at my dis- 
position," which simply means that I am welcome. Its inhab- 
itants seemed to be a woman, who may have been a widow (you 
can never tell widows here) ; her son, a customs' guard ; and Jo- 
aquin Calvo, M.D., a custom-house officer. They kindly pro- 



32 NEW GRANADA. 

posed to procure me a horse to go next day to Barranquilla, 
distant about eight miles, directly up the river. 

Some horsemen rode past while I was sitting with them, and 
fairly started me to my feet with the naming colors of their ruanas. 
Those of the better class may be regarded as striped shawls, 
woven of thread cotton, with a few inches of seam left unsewed 
in the centre to admit the head. The name of poncho, by which 
we best know them, must not be used in some parts of the 
country, and is little used any where. The heavier article, 
made of two thicknesses of flannel or blanket, often thick 
enough to shed water, is called a bayeton. Ruanas may cost 
from two to five dollars ; a good bayeton, an article no traveler 
should be without, costs about eight dollars. When made of 
India-rubber cloth it is called an encauchado. 

One hut of two rooms had the shop in one room, and the other 
served as a family room and for the public school. This consisted 
of about a dozen boys. It is contrary to law to have girls and 
boys in the same school, and as it is only large places that can 
maintain two public schools, girls must generally learn as they 
can at home, or, as is too often the case, go ignorant. I now 
look at Sabanilla with a more experienced eye, and conclude that 
it is the meanest town that I have seen in New Granada, and its 
school is also the poorest. Here I saw naked boys in school. 
Elsewhere it would not be allowed. The teacher was a mere 
boy, and the school was almost completely destitute of books. 
But it is a credit to such a town to have a school at all, when it 
has no church. 

I walked down from Sabanilla to the custom-house wharf. 
The most striking thing on the way is the mangrove-tree, Rhi- 
zophora Mangle, called here mangle. The roots branch out 
from some way up the stem, and the fruit stays on the trees 
till some time after the seed has sprouted, and its radicle, escap- 
ing the rind of the fruit, hangs dangling in the air over the wa- 
ter and mud where it buries itself when it drops. 

I picked up here the acridly poisonous fruit of the manchinael- 
tree, Hippomane Mancinella. Both this and chamomile are 
called here manzanilla, a diminutive of manzana, an apple. It 
may be the poison of the tree that makes it fatal to sleep under 
its shade, but I should not like to sleep out of doors at any place 



CUSTOM-HOUSE. 33 

where it would grow. Here, too, a violently stinging plant of 
the same order, Cnidosculus stimulosa, had wellnigh "stimula- 
ted" my fingers. 

The custom-house, as I said, is a beautiful large white "build- 
ing, with an inclined plane leading up to it from the miserable 
little wharf, to which goods must be brought in lighters. Not a 
bale of goods has ever traveled up to the custom-house, nor can 
I see that a single room of it has ever been of use to the nation. 
Had the money been spent in building a ship-wharf instead of 
an inclined plane, and a large store-house on the wharf, it would 
have been of great service to commerce. But other nations have 
their follies ; and one, at least, builds custom-houses where the 
revenue is less than the cost of collecting. 

The custom-house hill would make a fine site for a city but 
for the want of water. Sabanilla is supplied by boats, that go 
to a point where the river is fresh, pull out a plug, let in as much 
as they want, and return with it washing their feet. The sup- 
ply of eatables is more mysterious to me. I heard of a farm 
some three miles off; but beyond that papaw and a young cocoa 
palm, I saw not the first approximation to cultivation. 

Under the hill, at the wharf, the low sheds belong to a foreign 
firm in New Granada, and are rented to the government. Here 
I saw the collector and inspector passing goods. Their swords 
and pistols were lying on the table by them, and their attendants 
were ripping open every bale, broaching every cask, opening ev- 
ery box, and weighing all things, wet and dry. Such is the law. 
The inspector placed the weights on the scale, and the collector 
recorded their several weights. If the weights of the several par- 
cels were nearly equal, the vigilance of the officers would relax 
a little after probing, ripping, and broaching some fifty parcels. 

I do not suppose smuggling is impossible at Sabanilla, but 
its chief difficulty is not in the seal on the main hatch and the 
watchman on board, but rather in the uninhabited state of the 
country around the landing. Much, however, may be done by 
bribery, and many officers will be found open to it. In the short 
interval that our vessel lay in the harbor, I believe nearly all the 
officers of the port were changed. The displaced collector asked 
my certificate that he was not intoxicated when he visited us, 
and I readily gave it. 

C 



34 NEW GRANADA. 



CHAPTEE III. 

BAEEANQUILLA. 

Ride to Barranquilla. — First Spot in the Tropics. — Lizards. — Mail-carrier. — 
Town. — Government of New Granada. — Governor. — Prison. — Church. — Boat 
Expedition. — Bongo. — Poling. — A Night with Bogas and Musquitoes. — Cana 
de la Pina. — Harbor of Sabanilla. 

The next day was -my ride to Barranquilla. I started early 
to avoid the heat, and took a cup of coffee at the house where 
they offered me the horse. I never tasted so good coffee before 
in my life, and I am sorry to say that, in all my subsequent trav- 
els, I have not seen another cup like it. There was a fragrance 
about it that I should like to meet again. 

This ride might be called one of the epochs of my life. A 
botanist feels a growing desire to visit the tropics every time 
that he examines or arranges plants from the sunny lands. The 
difficulty of gratifying the desire generally grows with its growth 
and strengthens with its strength, and remains for life a case of 
stable equilibrium or equal balance of centrifugal and centripetal 
forces. In my case the centripetal force had proved too weak, 
and here I was traversing the space I had so long desired to en- 
ter. It was like an illimitable conservatory. The little bead- 
peas, Abrus precatorius, lay scattered on the ground. They are 
familiar to many at the North from their beauty. They are of 
a bright red, with a round black spot. I was surprised not to 
find more Aroid plants, for I saw but one climbing against the 
trunks of trees, and of this I barely found one flower. I saw a 
beautiful passion-flower — apparently Passiflora quadrangularis 
— picked it, and threw it away again. In short, the day seemed 
filled to the brink with a tide of happiness which seemed every 
moment ready to overflow. 

It is said that the traveler retains for life a peculiar affection 
for the first spot where his feet have pressed a tropical soil. 
Certain it is that my mind turns back with strong longings from 
the happier scenes that now surround me to the Lower Magda- 



THE FIRST RIDE. 35 

lena. I may Tbe obliged to confess it is a dry, sterile, desolate 
region, with inhabitants few and far between, and of the ruder 
cast of Granadinos ; but I love it, and always shall, next to the 
rocky little farm that I first called home. But what a contrast ! 

The farm in Westminster, Vermont, could boast the best as- 
sortment of rocks, the finest and tallest snow-drifts, and the 
most diminutive trout I ever knew, while my new love was 
blazing with a tropical drought and burning sand, a very para- 
dise for lizards. 

The lizards were numerous, but not large. They are not well 
studied, for there is a strong belief that some of them are ven- 
omous. Even Dr. Minor B. Halstead, of Panama, believes that 
it was a lizard that bit a man whom he saw dead with a ven- 
omous wound ; and they tell strange stories of a lizard in Bogo- 
ta that they call salamanqueja. They say that a body of sol- 
diers drank from a jar of liquor, and all died. They found, on 
examination, a salamanqueja at the bottom of the jar. I believe 
them all harmless. They are not easily caught, although their 
long tail seems to serve no other purpose than as a handle to 
take them by, just as Cuba or Panama would be to the Model 
Republic. 

In the day's ride I found no houses except at a small town 
called La Playa — the beach. It has a small Plaza — the al- 
most universal centre of a Spanish town, with a few miserable 
huts ranged around it. Sabanilla has no Plaza. Towns here 
are laid out by authority, and are rarely irregular or straggling. 
The Plaza is sometimes paved, and is generally the seat of a 
weekly market, almost always on the Sabbath, so as to secure 
a better attendance on the church on that day. 

Soon after leaving La Playa, I fell in with the mail-carrier. 
He was on a mule, on a saddle somewhat resembling a saw- 
horse. The four horns were very convenient to hang things on. 
On one of them hung perhaps the cheapest pair of shoes possi- 
ble. They call them albarcas. They were mere soles of raw 
hide, with a loop to put the great toe through, and perhaps some 
leather thongs to tie them on with. His hammock helped to 
cushion his saw-horse, and from one side projected his sword. 
He was bearer of the weekly mail from Barranquilla to the cus- 
tom-house at Sabanilla. 



36 NEW GRANADA. 

In all my ride I saw nothing of the river, and Tbut one field, 
and that contained nothing hut maize. The first symptom of 
approaching Barranquilla was that my companion stopped by 
the road-side to dress himself. Next, the heads of palms ap- 
peared, the first I had seen in my trip, except a low species. 
Those now before me were cocoas growing in the gardens of 
Barranquilla. Like the mail -carrier, I too had my toilet to 
make ; for the lady at Sabanilla had taught me to roH my coat 
up in my handkerchief, wrapping it in diagonally, and tying 
the two free comers around my waist. I stopped at the very 
edge of the town to put it on. 

Barranquilla looks much better than Sabanilla, for the houses 
are all whitewashed, according to law, and some of them are of 
two stories. I did not at once learn the first radical distinction 
between houses as tiled or thatched. It seems to be thought 
that the best possible thatched house is inferior to the poorest 
tiled one. At this .place the thatch appeared to be cat-tail flag 
— Typha ; but farther up, it is of the same leaves as the Pan- 
ama hats — iraca, Carludovica palmata. In all cases thatch is 
called paja, straw. 

I came up mainly to deliver letters of introduction from the 
Grranadan minister in the United States to the governor, and to 
Senor Jose Maria Pino, one of the chief merchants of this re- 
gion. I found the latter in his warehouse, where he received 
me very politely, offering me a glass of wine. I capitulated for 
lemonade. He insisted on my spending the night in town, and 
furnished me a guide to Mrs. Creighton's house, the only de- 
cent stopping-place in town, where I paid at the rate of eighty 
cents a day. Here he did me the honor of a call in the evening. 

Barranquilla boasts a private school and a public school for 
boys, but no school for girls that we could call one. Even two 
girls, taught in the same house, would make a school, according 
to the governor's report, which states the number of female 
schools in the province to be about five, and the number of 
scholars some twenty or twenty-five. The public schools are 
all professedly on the Lancasterian plan, and the variations are 
deteriorations, not improvements. A great clumsy wheel, five 
feet in diameter, with the written alphabet on its circumference, 
is the most useless part of the furniture. The teacher here is 



TEEEITOEIAL DIVISIONS. 37 

a young man, "but of some education, and, among other accom- 
plishments, can read a little English. 

New Granada is divided into one state, two provinces, and 
three territories ; in 1851 these contained one hundred and thirty 
cantones, subdivided into eight hundred and sixteen districts, 
and seventy aldeas or hamlets. These last have the local gov- 
ernment concentrated into fewer hands than in the districts. 

I give the modern political divisions once for all, and the of- 
ficers, etc. These need a thorough study, in order to under- 
stand any thing about the country, for it is useless to try to 
translate some of them. The national government is called Go- 
bierno, its executive Presidente, and its Legislature Congreso. 
The provincial government is Gobernacion, its executive Gober- 
nador, and its Legislature Camera Provincial. The executive 
of a canton is Jefe Politico : it has no Legislature. The execu- 
tive of a district is the Alcalde, and the Legislature Cabildo. 
The district is Distrito, formerly called Distrito parroquial and 
Parroquia, or parish. Vice-parroquia is a parish dependent on 
another for occasional services of its cura, or parish priest, who 
was, till September, 1853, an officer of the distrito as much as the 
alcalde is. There are no parroquias nor vice-parroquias now. 

To sum this up in a table, it is as follows : 

Nation Capital National Presidente Congreso Gobierno. 

Provincia Capital Provincial Gobernador Camera Provincial Gobernacion. 

Canton Cabezera Jefe Politico Jefetura. 

Distrito Cabeza Alcalde Cabildo Alcaldia. 

Aldea is a partially organized distrito; Territorio is a partial- 
ly organized provincia: both are thinly inhabited, while the 
Estado de Panama has conceded to it more independence from 
the central authority than have the provinces. 

Barranquilla is the seat of gobernacion or provincial govern- 
ment for the province of Sabanilla. I had a letter for the pre- 
vious governor, and called with it on the present incumbent, 
Seiior Julian Ponce, and had a very interesting call, but de- 
clined his invitation to dine with him, fearing to incommode 
him. 

The gobernacion always gives employment to one or two men 
besides the governor. He was appointed by the president for- 
merly, and appointed the head of the government of the can- 



38 NEW GKANADA. 

ton (jefe politico), and he, in his turn, the chief of the district 
(alcalde). Perhaps New Granada is governed too much. The 
golbernacion here occupies the lower story of the governor's 
house. 

This has been the arrangement, hut much is changed in the 
new constitution. The cantones have no legal existence or offi- 
cers. Many officers appointed are now to be elected. Among 
these are the governors, who are still to he the agents of the pres- 
ident, though they may he his personal enemies. Thus they 
may interfere in any national matter, as mails or military move- 
ments. I fear this can not last. 

I visited also the provincial prison. It has a hall, with two 
rooms on each side. The keeper [alcaide) was at work making- 
shoes. He was the first man that I saw at work on land in the 
country. If I saw any other work here, it was sawing boards, 
by two men, using a rude contrivance to elevate one end of the 
log so that one could stand partly beneath it. The prison was 
not very full nor very clean, but the most objectionable feature 
was that the windows of two rooms opened on the street. No 
prison here is made of any thing stronger than rammed earth or 
unburned bricks. Of course, the volition of the prisoner must 
have much to do with the duration of his captivity in such a pen. 
The laws of different provinces differ as to whether the prisoners 
shall be fed at the cost of the province. In all, they beg from 
the windows whenever they can. 

My only other call of interest was at the church. I was first 
conducted to an old priest, who had a sort of study in an upper 
room of the church. He assures me that things have gone 
wrong ever since the King of Spain lost his power here. He is 
the only man that I have found that had the frankness or im- 
prudence to avow this opinion. As the Cuban government is 
now the only remaining specimen of Spanish domination in the 
New World, we can not easily appreciate too highly the loss that 
New Granada suffered at the overthrow of the power of Spain. 

We descended to the church, my hat being carefully removed 
before crossing the threshold. It is a vast shell, with an earth 
floor. The principal altar is at one end, but along both sides 
are placed secondary altars that are rarely used for mass. There 
are no seats in this church. The priest stated that the town 



BAREANQUILLA. 39 

greatly needed a larger and better church, though this is "but 
half filled even on special occasions. 

The organ particularly attracted my attention. It was of 
parlor size, but had outside it two huge pairs of bellows that re- 
quire two men to blow them. The carpentry around the organ 
was rather coarse, but it was ornamented with a row of trumpet- 
shaped pipes, projecting horizontally from the front, and the front 
row of the remaining pipes had faces painted on them, long and 
narrow, like the reflection of the face from the back of a spoon. 
The cura has an assistant. 

On my return I had quite a discussion with our captain as to 
whether I was expected to pay for my horse. As he was a pro- 
fessed hater of the Spanish race, I wished to prove him wrong. 
I waited the result, and was at length asked 80 cents for the 
bare use of the horse, a lazy animaL It was precisely what the 
captain paid for a guide, a horse, and his maintenance. 

I went again to Barranquilla by water. I was anxious to see 
the Canal of Piiia, that connects the waters near Sabanilla har- 
bor with those of the Magdalena. I agreed with the patron, or 
captain of a bongo, or gigantic canoe, to take me there for $1 20. 
The bongo was loaded with goods from the custom-house for 
some merchant in Barranquilla. It had a little piece of deck at 
the stern, but the only protection of the goods from the weather 
was some dry hides that were spread over them. The crew con- 
sisted of a huge black man, who was patron, another a little black- 
er and smaller, and a mulatto. The patron had a little naked son 
on board. The ordinary watermen are called bogas. 

We pushed off from the custom-house wharf. The only means 
of moving the bongo, besides the patron's paddle (canalete), were 
long poles (palanca), to which a fork of a different wood was 
tied, and smaller poles, to which a hook (gancha) had been tied 
in the same way. The boga applies the fork of the palanca to 
the muddy bottom, and the other end to the naked chest where 
it joins the shoulder, and thus gives motion to the boat by walk- 
ing toward the stern. The rate may be considered nearly three 
miles an hour. We soon arrived at Sabanilla. At the cus- 
tom-house the bongo can come up to the wharf, even when fully 
loaded, and drawing, perhaps, three feet of water, but here we 
could only come within eight feet of the end. I went through 



40 NEW GEANADA. 

the town for a ripe plantain to eke out my supper, but in vain. 
There was not one in town. I then returned to the Ibongo. To 
go on board, I must either wade, go in a boat, or on the shoul- 
ders of a man. I chose the latter, and had my feet wet for my 
pains. The bogas had not yet appeared. At length one of 
them came, and told me that he could get me some plantains. 
I gave him a half dime. He returned and informed me that he 
found he was mistaken^ so he had filled a bottle with the half 
dime. 

At length we pushed off. "We went to the east, and even a 
little northward of east, now through narrow channels, now 
through broader expanses of water, having little or no current 
to contend with. AH the way on our left could be heard the 
roar of the ocean surf, into which, farther up from Sabanilla, 
boats are sometimes carried and lost. We were in the middle 
of one of these broad places about 10 P.M., when the anchor 
went down with a sullen plunge, and we went to bed. They al- 
lowed me the sail for my bed, pillow, counterpane, musquito-net, 
and roof, and it served its purposes well. Bogas are as uncon- 
scious of musquitoes as a rhinoceros. They unrolled pieces of 
matting, called estera, and slept on them without covering. It 
is exactly such as is used for matting floors. They wondered 
where my matting was. 

When I waked it was still dark, but we were moving. First 
we were passing a dark channel almost overarched by trees. At 
dawn it was through a floating meadow of tall grass-weeds and 
splendid bulbous flowers. Later, the ground grew firmer and 
the water more shallow. Then we met a boat fast in the chan- 
nel. There was another boat behind ours. Those of the bogas 
of the three boats who wore any clothes took them off, and all 
jumped into the water and pushed the boats past each other. 
" And this," said I, as the bogas continued wading and push- 
ing the boat half a mile, " this is a constriction on the main ar- 
tery of the commerce of New Granada !" The Canal of Piiia is 
cut through soft alluvial ground. It ends within six miles of 
the sea, and might be deepened sufficiently for the passage of 
steam-boats for $100,000. 

We at length emerged from the narrow channel into the real 
Magdalena, broad, rapid, and turbid like the Mississippi at St. 



STAETING OF STEAMEE. 41 

Louis, although, even above this, part of its waters had joined the 
ocean through chasms of the embankment, which prolongs its 
northern bank so as to carry the river many miles along the 
coast, as a mill-race carries water along the bank of a river. 

Now our difficulties commenced. The poles could not be ap- 
plied to the bottom of the river. The edge was of floating marsh 
and drift-wood. With poles, hooks, and the patron's paddle, 
the problem was to hug the shore and push up stream. Repeat- 
ed efforts often were necessary to pass a projecting log. Hours 
were thus consumed in advancing a few miles of capital steam- 
boat navigation. At length we entered another narrow channel, 
and an hour or two more brought us to the steam-boat, a mile be- 
low Barranquilla. Leaving the bongo there, I walked up to the 
town. 

A day or two after, I witnessed the departure of the first steam- 
boat that had left Barranquilla for a month. No hour of start- 
ing was fixed, except it was to be " as soon as the passengers 
had got on board." Accordingly, trunks and packages, on the 
heads and shoulders of men, were early seen coming down from 
the city, and, what was to me surprising, four or five carts, al- 
though I had supposed there were but two pair of wheels in 
town. At length the passengers were on board, and the plank 
taken in at 8. The next operation was to take in a few fathoms 
of chain and raise the anchor. The next thing was to turn 
round in a channel no wider than the boat's length. All this 
took some time. Then came the waving of handkerchiefs, as the 
boat moved down stream for some hours to the lower end of the 
island that lies in front of Barranquilla. It arrived opposite the 
starting-place a little before night. 

The only difficulty in the location of a city at Sabanilla is 
the want of water. The natural difficulty must be much less 
than at Cartagena, and it can be easily remedied by a steam- 
pump or wind-mill. The climate must be healthy, I think, and, 
if agriculture were duly stimulated in the region, there could be 
no lack of supplies. 

The harbor is the western edge of an estuary, into which the 
Magdalena empties. Like the Mississippi, this river brings 
down an immense amount of sediment. This causes a bar at 
the mouth. Here it meets the trade-wind and current from the 



42 NEW GEANADA. 

east, and is compelled to deposit its sediment, not at right an- 
gles with the river, and parallel with the coast, but in a direc- 
tion determined by the combined action of river, wind, and sea- 
current. Little or no fresh water passes through the harbor. 
The harbor is exposed somewhat to the winds from the north, 
and is not deep enough for large vessels. In value it is inter- 
mediate between those of Santa Marta and Cartagena, but 
might be made far more useful than either, were the Canal of 
Pina opened, as it will yet be. 



CHAPTER IV. 

CARTAGENA. 

Entrance to a splendid Harbor. — A walled City and a finished City. — Consul 
Sanchez. — Mule Travel. — La Popa. — Turbaco. — Arjona. — The Dique. — Ma- 
hates. — How the Duke did a Yankee. — Calamar. — A Dance. 

The navigator who sails from Sabanilla to Cartagena has 
both wind and current in his favor. As he nears its white 
walls, he wonders to have finished his voyage so soon. He has 
not finished it. He must pass the town entirely to reach Boca 
Grande, the large mouth of the harbor. This he can not enter, 
for it was closed up by a costly wall completed in 1795, be- 
cause the entrance was too near the city and too wide. This 
entrance they now would gladly free from obstructions, but the 
commerce of Cartagena is at present so small, that the measure, 
though often proposed, has never been attempted. 

Still you must proceed to the west, and, passing the Isle of 
Tierra Bomba, you take in the pilot, and enter the Boca Chica, 
little mouth ; and, passing between two forts, you are in the 
harbor of Cartagena. Facilis est descensus : it was easy sailing 
clown from opposite Cartagena to Boca Chica ; but now the city 
is out of sight, and you have the wind against you, and you find 
the voyage longer than you thought a little before. 

You anchor at an inconvenient distance from town. Will 
commerce never demand decent wharves here? What would 
Boston or New York be without wharves ? How would Liver- 
pool dispense with her docks ? You land on a boat-wharf as 



CARTAGENA. 43 

free from commerce, perhaps, as the Battery at New York; pass- 
ing through a thick wall, you are at last in Cartagena. 

It is the first and only walled town I have ever seen. I look 
at its defenses with amazement. They seem to have cost as 
much as all the buildings within them. A good, well-equipped 
railroad to the Magdalena would have cost much less. First, 
here is an island entirely walled in, except that certain waste 
grounds, that would have made the wall too irregular in its 
form, were left between it and the sea. These are not at pres- 
ent worth a dollar to any body. Then there is, southeast of it, 
another island, the suburb of Jimani (Gethsemane), that has its 
wall, its gate, its defenses, and bridge ; and then there is, out- 
side of this, the detached fort of San Felipe de Barajas, on 
Mount San Lazaro, a steep detached rock, in which the works 
are cut, unfortunately attacked by Vernon in his siege. 

I can only speak of these works as a layman. Next to their 
cost, the most observable thing is the compactness they give the 
town. Cartagena is finished — has been so a long time ; it looks 
as if it might have been a hundred years. Eoom is precious 
within fortifications, so the streets are narrow, the houses of two 
stories, and the plazas small. Withal, there is an air of neat- 
ness about it, notwithstanding that rain-water is sold by the 
cask, that really does one good to see. 

Scarce as space is within the city, the walls furnish an ex- 
ceedingly delightful promenade. Every where you find water 
on one hand, and the old, sleepy town on the other. There is 
another fine walk on the beach, between the walls and the water, 
where those who do not fear sharks too much may take a nice 
sea-bath. I saw little use made of either of these facilities, 
perhaps because my stay was so short. For the same reason, 
I saw none of the many pretty drives that there are in the 
neighborhood of the city. If you are to go to the interior, you 
must here take leave of all wheeled conveyances, unless it may 
be in Bogota. « > 

I love Cartagena, and for many reasons. Not the least is, 
that it is the residence of that model of American consuls, Eamon 
Leon Sanchez. Mr. Sanchez is an annexed citizen of the United 
States, having been a Spanish subject in Florida. Speaking 
both languages with facility, for a long time a resident of Car- 



44 NEW GRANADA. 

tagena, an experienced merchant and a polished gentleman, if any- 
thing is wanted to enable him to serve his countrymen, it must 
be the will to do so, and of this will I have never heard of any- 
one that has yet found him lacking. Never had I more need 
of a friend than when I arrived in Cartagena without a single 
letter, for I had not anticipated a visit to this city ; but letters 
would be of little use if all men were like Mr. Sanchez. From 
all the letters that I carried to South America, there did not re- 
sult one half so much pleasure or profit as I have experienced 
in the bosom of that excellent family. Mr. Sanchez has long 
been consul here. Were the office a more profitable one, it 
would doubtless, ere this, have been taken from him to reward 
some maker of stump speeches or puller of wires, who, leaving 
his family and interests in the United Sjtates, would hastily come 
and gather as many dollars as the length of his harvest would 
permit. 

Cartagena has suffered numerous sieges that I can not stop 
to enumerate. That by Admiral Yernon in 1741, commemo- 
rated in Thomson's Seasons, is the one that will most interest 
the Englishman or American. The last, in 1841, was witness- 
ed and endured by the family of Mr. Sanchez. 

I took leave of Cartagena with great regret, and a strong de- 
sire to revisit it, or to meet elsewhere Mr. and Mrs. Sanchez, 
and the amiable sister of the latter ; and my memory of those 
brief happy days stands in strong contrast with much that I 
have seen this side of there. To one who arrives here inexpe- 
rienced in wheelless traveling, the advice and assistance of the 
good consul is invaluable. It seems incredible that your two 
trunks will ever be mounted on the back of a mule. Tou are 
told to have them even in number, each pair of equal size and 
weight, and not much to exceed one hundred pounds each ; and 
if you neglect this, dear is the penalty you pay. An article of 
freight may exceed the ordinary limits, and, with time and 
money, it will reach its destination, but to the traveler such de- 
tention would be worse than the entire sacrifice of his baggage. 

Every trunk ought to have a water-proof cap, covering it en- 
tirely except the bottom, or, in default of this, it must be en- 
cumbered with an encerado. This is a stiff, sticky cloth, wa- 
ter-proof with pitch or paint. It is tied on with a rope that 



PREPAKATIONS FOR LAND TRAVEL. 45 

you do not pretend to untie with your own hands. I have 
paid eighty cents per trunk for encerados and ropes. 

You must own the ropes that tie on the encerados. The pe- 
ons will steal them if they can, for they have a great propensity 
to stealing any thing of the nature of string. Nothing would 
be secure from them, from a needleful of thread to a cable. The 
ropes for the hammocks and encerados are called incorrectly 
lazo, which means running-knot or noose. Ropes of raw hide, 
rejo, are sometimes used to tie encerados, and always to tie the 
cargas to the mule. These ropes are furnished with the beasts. 
Whip-lashes are made generally of slender rejo, so the lash is 
translated by rejo. 

Provisions for the journey are often put in cubical cases of 
nearly two feet on a side, made of leather, and lined within ; 
these are called petaca. If roughly made and not lined, they 
are atillos. 

Your next concern is to secure cattle — bestias — a term that 
includes horses, oxen, female mules (mulas), and male mules 
(machos). If the number you require be five or more, you pay 
for the number you hire, and the hired man — peon — is paid by 
the owner of the cattle ; if the number be less, the peon is paid 
for as an additional bestia. Thus four beasts cost you the same 
as five. It would be difficult to force them to make an excep- 
tion to the rule, if not impossible. The peon is to feed himself 
and his cattle from his employer's purse ; he is also your servant 
to bring you water to wash, hang your hammock, etc. ; indeed, 
the limits of his rights and duties are not well defined. At the 
ferry you pay your fare and that of your baggage ; he pays his 
and that of the cattle, if the boat helps them to swim. 

Your peon can not load his mules alone, but only in an emer- 
gency will call on you to hold one trunk against the side of the 
animal while he puts on its fellow and ties them together. A 
load is called a carga, and its two component halves, tercios. 
The peon throws his ruana over the mule's head to cover his 
eyes so that he will stand still. Then he puts on a pair of 
cushions called an enjalma. Next he brings one tercio or half 
load, and places it against the animal's side, where some one 
must hold it while he places its fellow — compaiiero — on the op- 
posite side, and ties them together. 



46 NEW GKANADA. 

When all are loaded, it will Tbe prudent for yon to see the 
peon and cargas safe off before losing sight of them. You need 
not keep with them all day, but it makes a great difference 
whether you are before or behind them. If you go before, they 
travel rather better; but it may happen, if you pass at 5 o'clock 
a place where there is to be a ball or a frolic, that something 
will happen to some of the cargas that will render it impossible 
for them to reach the place where you are innocently waiting for 
them. Your best remedy will be to believe all the peon says, but 
watch him better next time ; and count yourself happy if your 
bedding do not line his nest on a night you have to do without 
it, or if you get it again uninfested with bloodthirsty parasites. 

You now pass out of the gate into an open space that lies be- 
tween the walls and the suburb of Jimani. This you cross di- 
agonally, pass a second gate, moat, drawbridge, and bridge-head, 
and you have before you, on your left, the sharp rock of San La- 
zaro, hewn into a fort. Farther on, you have, on the right, a 
suburb of mud and thatch, and on the left, the high, convent- 
crowned hill, La Popa, the stern, which first caught your eye in 
coming up from Boca Chica. The convent is deserted, and the 
place has been the seat of some slack military operations. 

Unfortunately for Cartagena, La Popa commands its defenses. 
To include it would be to double their cost, already a hundred- 
fold more than it ought ever to have been. Any detached for- 
tification there would be but to make the fate of the city depend- 
ent on the taking of it ; so it seems to me that it would have 
been better not to have fortified Cartagena on the land side, but 
to have invested the cost of the walls in endowing free-schools. 
I was sorry not to have visited the top of La Popa, but I do not 
consider that I have yet seen Cartagena. 

Next comes a pond that I suspect is brackish, La Laguna de 
Tesca. Your peon will tell you strange stories of the viviparous 
fish — manati — with women's breasts, found there. It is the 
Manatus Americanus, a mammal. This is Herndon's cow-fish, 
a staple article of food on the Amazon, but not often caught 
here. No wonder that its meat is not like fish, for it is no 
more a fish than a seal or a whale is. Near here I saw a 
pale-green succulent bush for the first time in my life. When 
I saw it I exclaimed, " This can be no other than Batis mariti- 



TURBACO. 47 

ma!" The plant is considerably diffused over the Antilles, and 
I had wondered at not meeting it at Sabanilla. I have seen it 
since under the very walls of Cartagena, growing in company 
with the low, straggling, abominably thorny bush that bears the 
burning beans or nicker-beans, Guilandina Bonduc. Batis was 
first described by Browne in 1756 ; but the true nature of the 
plant has remained an enigma up to a short time before I saw 
it, when Dr. Torrey discovered that it belonged to the neighbor- 
hood of the Euphorbiate and Empetrate orders. 

Farther on we came to Ternera, a small collection of houses, 
near which I gathered the singular flower of Hura crepitans, a 
large, handsome Euphorbiate tree, with milky juice. The beau- 
tiful fruits sometimes reach the States under the name of sand- 
boxes. They generally explode with a great noise, when there 
remains nothing but seeds and chips. 

Now we leave the flat, level ground, and rise the hill to Tur- 
baco. Probably no spot in New Granada in sight of the sea af- 
fords so agreeable a residence as Turbaco. Here the monopod 
hero, Santa Anna, fights cocks, and waits the moving of the wa- 
ters in Mexico. Some of the wealthier inhabitants of Cartagena 
have country-houses here, and, among others, the British consul, 
Mr. Kortright. Here ends the carriage-road, and you feel as if 
you might also add, here ends civilization. I had hoped to see 
some mud volcanoes within four miles of here, and was much 
disappointed in not being able to stop. 

Turbaco is called nearly two and a half leguas from Cartagena. 
It is easy to translate legua by league, and call it three miles. 
An old Spanish league, indeed, was three marine miles = 3.459 
statute miles, but other leagues have been used from 2.6 miles 
to 4.15. The common old Castilian legua was 3.4245 miles; 
the present legal legua Granadina is 3.10169 miles. 

Unless you can find two measures given, you can in no case 
be sure of what league is used. I follow this rule : understand 
all leagues to be common Castilian ones unless there is evidence 
to the contrary. A league is an hour's journey of a baggage- 
mule in good weather, with an ordinary load and no drawbacks. 
You can never calculate on performing more than this, but you 
will find a thousand good reasons for making less. So I call 
Turbaco eight miles from Cartagena. 



48 NEW GRANADA. 

At Turbaco you turn and take your last look of the sea. 
Who can tell whether it may not he a last look indeed ? So 
long had I dwelt on the sea, that taking leave of it was like 
taking a last view of home. To gaze on the fading hills of 
JSTavesink was nothing in comparison. At this moment my 
mind reverts to that last view, in a tropical twilight, with a 
tenderness that I feel at scarce another retrospect of all my life. 
An American is scarce away from home in any spot where the 
tide flows. 

A long night-ride, in which a French gentleman in the India- 
rubber business was fortunately my companion, and unfortu- 
nately my baggage was not, brought me to Arjona. As I never 
saw the place, having entered long after dark, and left it before 
daylight, I can say little, except that it has a plaza and quite a 
number of houses, and a posada, or stopping-place, where it 
was quite difficult to make a supper. We gave our horses post- 
meat, the usual treatment of hired horses in New Granada. In 
plain English, we left them tied, starving, as we could do no 
better. A man who lets you his horse never expects you to 
feed it more than to sustain life, and the letting of a horse is 
often prudently coupled with the condition that, if it die from 
any cause whatever, the loss shall be yours. I would not like 
to lend or let a horse to a Granadino without this slight provi- 
sion for the animal's comfort. 

Our posada, or stopping-place for the night, was a tienda or 
small shop. These tiendas may be considered as a house with 
two rooms, one of which has a counter run across it before the 
front door, and behind the counter another door, opening into 
the other room — sala, or parlor, as I will call it. The sala is 
the dancing-room and sleeping-room, and generally also the 
dining-room. We ate, as an exception, in a sort of shed, which 
connected the house with the kitchen. 

I had first slept in a hammock in Barranquilla, and I am 
ready to pronounce it one of the cheapest luxuries known. To 
read in, by day or night, no bed can equal it. You can vary 
your posture as you please, on your back or side, diagonally 
or parallel, and you never find it hard, and I, for one, never 
tire of it. Many complain that the constant use of the ham- 
mock injures their chest, tending to roll them up into a ball ; 



THE HAMMOCK. 49 

but I have thus far experienced no such inconvenience. And 
although they say that there are in this country bed-bugs more 
formidable than any we know, they never molest one in a ham- 
mock ; nor do fleas, with all their agility, manage so often to 
take up their quarters with you as in a bed. 

Apropos to fleas and bed-bugs, I propose to do justice to the 
former when I bring my narrative up to Cartago in this happy 
valley, but as to bed-bugs I have not seen one. The Cimex 
lectularius is said not to live at a greater altitude than 5817 
feet. Nor have I, with all annoyances, goats included, suffer- 
ed so much in any night in New Granada as in my penultimate 
night in our dear native land, when I relighted my candle in the 
small hours, held it under my tormentors, and, to use the words 
of a poet whom I can not quote well from memory, I " gave to 
grease and vengeance" so many of these hateful creatures as 
nearly to extinguish it. For the convenience of more unfortu- 
nate travelers, I will mention that the Spanish call these novel- 
ties that disturb our peace chinches. Query : Is it mere coinci- 
dence that the same word (derived from cimex) is used in the 
Southwestern States for these same insects ? 

Beds are unknown in this country except, so far as I have 
seen, in Cartagena or near Bogota. The traveler's usual bed is 
to lay his bayeton and ruana on the poyo, or bench that runs 
round the principal apartment of a house — the sala. At the 
very best, he has a square frame allowed for a bedstead, and 
nothing more on it than a thickness of the estera — matting used 
for carpets — laid on a raw hide, stretched as tight as a drum- 
head. All the addition your host thinks of offering you is a 
red pillow in a pillow-case open at both ends, trimmed doubt- 
less with some sort of edging or embroidery. 

Our bill here was sixty cents for our supper ; nothing for the 
hammock they lent me, and nothing for the posts to which our 
horses were tied. Early indeed were we on our way, and, had 
not my companion been a baquiano, as they call a man familiar 
with a road or with any operation (in law-English, an expert), 
my great haste would have been bad speed. As it is, some 
five leagues beyond Arjona represent themselves to my mind as 
a series of man-traps and horse-traps, with one pond of the most 
stupendous frogs I ever heard or heard of. 

D 



50 NEW GBANADA. 

The first thing we shall recognize on the road will he the 
Dique. So they name a crooked canal that they have laid out 
from Calamar, on the Magdalena, to the tide-water near Carta- 
gena. I imagine the day is past when such a work could great- 
ly benefit the commerce of the Magdalena, even were.it perfect- 
ed, as it never will be. It has absorbed a great deal of capital, 
which has shared the fate of most Granadan operations — for I 
have not yet learned the Spanish word for dividend. 

This opening is partly natural and partly artificial. Its cre- 
ation was one of the works of Spanish poliey to make of Carta- 
gena (a defensible place) the emporium of the country, instead 
of suffering a city to grow up at the natural outlet of trade, but 
a bad spot to fortify. It was destroyed by the same power in 
the war of independence. It has been partially reopened on a 
shorter line, making only one hundred and five miles from the 
Magdalena to Cartagena. Even were the work completed, it 
would not probably yield enough to keep it in repairs, unless 
the post of Sabanilla were again closed by law. From near this 
post boats still go occasionally to Cartagena. 

At the Dique is a ferry, where every passer who does not live 
in the province of Cartagena is obliged to pay a dime. When 
the canal is low and fordable, as now, this tax is called peaje ; 
were the canoe necessary, it would be pasaje ; and, were the wa- 
ter bridged, it would be pontazgo. Its chief use is to replenish 
the provincial treasury, and to drive off commerce and travel to 
the rival ports of Sabanilla and Santa Marta. These tolls were 
once part of the national revenue ; now, with great imprudence, 
they are put into the power of the provinces, and they often, as 
in the present instance, use them to their own detriment. 

Mahates or Mate, as they generally call it, is quite a place, 
34 miles from Cartagena. It is cabecera of a canton. It lies 
on low ground, and the traveler who thinks of stopping over 
night must be forewarned that the Dique keeps them well stock- 
ed with musquitoes. At Arjona there were none. I found a 
poor dinner rather dear there too. 

At Mahates I discovered once the most amusing imposition 
by which I was ever victimized. I must tell it to you, though 
you laugh at me. Well, at nine o'clock one night, I leaped off 
a steam-boat that was about making fast at Calamar, on her way 



A HOESE STORY. 51 

down the Magdalena. Breathless, I sought Joaquin Duque, 
with a letter for him in my hand. In a quarter of a minute I 
found him, put the letter into his hands, telling him, at the same 
time, I was a " cabinet courier" of the United States, and that I 
must he in Cartagena without loss of time. 

" How many animals do you need ?" he asked. 

" Three." 

"Three animals, Catalina," he said, turning to his wife; 
"quick! find Lorenzo!" 

Catalina ran one way, and Joaquin another, and in two min- 
utes more both cattle and peon were engaged. 

" Will you start now ?" asked the duke. 

" No ; but at three in the morning." 

By this time the boat had been fastened, the plank put out, 
and leisurely up came a Congressman on his way home from 
Bogota. He was a personal friend of Duque, and they had a 
good hearty hug. Then came two more Congressmen, then 
three more, all friends of Joaquin Duque, and all needing ani- 
mals for saddle and carga. I had not been any too quick in 
engaging mine. 

I hung my hammock and musquito-net in Duque's house, and 
slept till three, and then found nobody within call. Daylight 
came— six, seven, and eight. I stormed, and the Duke an- 
swered presently. The truth was, he had so many animals to 
get off that he could not find enough. Saddles, too, were want- 
ing, as many of the travelers had brought none. He dared not 
offend his personal friends by sending me off before them on so 
frivolous a pretext as that his word was pledged. 

But animals (horses and asses — no mules) were assembling, 
and I took some strange substitute for breakfast. It may have 
been an enormous quantity of chocolate, with boiled eggs, with- 
out bread or any thing else. It did not occupy my attention. 
I paid well for it — 20 cents. Just then Duque inquired if I did 
not want a gentle horse. I replied, " A gentle horse for a cab- 
met courier, forsooth ! Vaya !" Then I found a man who had 
a carga and a half was about fixing his half carga as a sobre- 
carga, a middle load, over the top of one of my light cargas. 

I called out, " To whom am I indebted for this present, and 
what shall I do with it when I get home ?" They took it off. 



52 NEW GKANADA. 

My horse was saddled, and I saw a peon putting my bridle 
on another horse. I called to him to put it on my horse. 

" I know it is your "bridle," said the duke, " hut your horse 
is not used to such. I will give her the bridle she is used to." 

I was too mad at the delay to notice any thing else. We 
were off at 9. I paid $4 80 each for my carga beasts, and $5 60 
for that which I rode. 

"Well, at Mahates I took off the saddle to rest her a bit, and 
I was horrified. She was a walking skeleton — skin and bone 
— minus a good piece of skin on the back. 

"Your horse never will reach Arjona," said a by-stander. 
" She is destroncada" 

I know of no English for destroncada, but I knew its mean- 
ing too well. It might designate the condition a gun would be 
in after it had successively lost its stock, lock, barrel, and ram- 
rod. 

Just then a peon of Duque's arrived. He brought the pleas- 
ing intelligence that one of my baggage-beasts had given out, 
and that one of my cargas was some leagues behind. 

" Tell me nothing of my cargas," I replied ; "but if you do 
not wish it to cost Senor Duque all he is worth, do you look me 
out a horse without a moment's delay." 

This was precisely what he was going to do. The price of 
an animal from Mahates to Cartagena is perhaps $1 50, and bet- 
ter animals at that than at Calamar at $5 60. So the duke 
gained some $4 by the services of poor Kackabones, who really 
had gone remarkably well considering her condition. I confess 
I was angry enough for an instant, but my wrath gave place to 
mirth when I discovered what sort of " bridle she had been used 
to." It was no bridle at all, but merely a head-stall with reins 
attached to it ! Duque had got short of bridles for some of his 
friends who had neglected to bring their own, and, not daring to 
offer them this thing, had ingeniously borrowed mine. 

As to my cargas I never took pains to inquire. I never doubt- 
ed that it was not my beast that gave out, as my cargas were 
considerably under weight. Either they selected for mine the 
weaker beasts, or, one of the others failing, they changed him for 
mine. Now I have told my story, not for the amusement of 
those who sit at home to laugh at me, but for the benefit of any 



CALAMAR. 53 

poor wight that may have to follow my steps. Let such " avoid 
entangling alliances" when he is in a hurry, and see that his 
peon has nothing to do with any man with whom he is unac- 
quainted, and particularly let him learn to Ibe, what I shall never 
become, a judge of horseflesh. 

But let us he off from Mahates, a place of dear dinners and 
cheap horses. We enter next a rolling country, covered with 
wood all the way to Arroyo Hondo. Here we see the moro, the 
fustic of the Magdalena. It is, I suppose, Moras tinctoria — a 
small tree. Sections of the trunk are put on mules and carried 
to the Magdalena. 

Arroyo Hondo is not worthy of the name of a village ; hut 
the remaining cluster of houses, bearing the lovely name of Sapo 
(toad), is altogether poorer yet. There was not another house 
till we came to Calamar. We are now on level ground. Possi- 
bly it is sometimes inundated. Here again is the Dique, with a 
bridge over it ; a well-built lock lifting up from the Magdalena, 
a guard-lock, and the river itself. This last cheers us. If 
we can live here till the first steam-boat comes up, we then shall 
have a respite from our sufferings and fatigues. But I know of 
nothing you will have to see here except it be some new palms 
back of the town, and the Spanish moss, that I believe to be the 
same as that of Mississippi — Tillandsia usneoides. They here 
call it salvaje. 

Fortunately, I have never spent much time in Calamar, but 
here I witnessed the drollest dance imaginable in the open air. 
I saw a light down a street running back from the river, and 
heard a strange thumping of a tamborine, accompanied by vocal 
exercises, that might be called singing or squalling, as you please. 
A dense crowd readily made way for me, and I reached the danc- 
ers. I found the lights were on tables where they sold cakes, 
sweets, and rum. The dancers used unadulterated moonlight. 
An old negro and his partner were in a most interesting atti- 
tude. She was dancing ad libitum; he, almost inclosing her in 
his arms, but not touching her at all, was following her motions 
as he could. He was in a stooping attitude, so as to bring his 
arms on a level with her waist. 



54 NEW GRANADA. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE MAGDALENA STEAMER. 

Steam on the Magdalena. — The Barranquilla. — Mouth of the Cauca. — Lady Pas- 
senger left. — Houses. — Bogas and their Women. — Banco and its Ants. — Its 
Priest as industrious. — Puerto National. — Fertility of Ichthyophagi. — San Pa- 
blo. — An opening for Practice. — Water-drinking and Drinking-water. — Geog- 
raphy. — Geographer lost in the Woods. — On a Sand-bar. 

Steam on the Magdalena has a long infancy. Bolivar arbi- 
trarily rescinded the first contract, giving a monopoly of it to 
Mr. Elbers ; a second was afterward given him, which he forfeit- 
ed by delays in the execution of it. 

It has been since open to free competition, but the boats were 
all owned at this time by two companies. The Santa Marta 
Company had the government for a partner, and, whenever it 
overtook a mail-canoe, carried the mail. The rival interests of 
Cartagena and Barranquilla maintained the other line, which had 
no aid from government. Both have since gone down, and an 
English company, which put on boats wholly unfit for the river, 
and mismanaged them as none but non-residents could do, must 
probably follow. 

Still, the enterprise will succeed whenever it shall be put in 
the right hands. The fare up is $96 from Barranquilla to Hon- 
da, and the returning fare $24. Freight enough can be had for 
several boats at $19 per ton up, and $16 down. 

No happier sight can greet the eyes of a traveler in a dull, 
mean village like Calamar, on a flat plain, with uninteresting- 
vegetation, than the approach of the steamer he is waiting for. 
The little naked urchins, clothed in their own skins of nankeen 
variegated with dirt, shout " Vapor /" the women get their bot- 
tles ready, and the lords of creation slowly rise from a recum- 
bent posture and walk down to the bank. 

It fell to my lot to be passenger in the Barranquilla, then un- 
der the command of Captain Chapman, an experienced navigator 
of the sea with sails, but little versed in river craft. Like the 



THE BOAT. 55 

Mississippi "boats, those of the Magdalena have "but one story for 
passengers. The deck belongs to the engineers, firemen, and 
bogas. These last make capital deck-hands. Their chief is call- 
ed contramaestro ; ours bore the name of Pedro, and a strange 
combination he was of savage and civilized man. He could talk 
a little English. You are at once brought in contact with him, 
as he takes charge of the baggage, all of which he will put in 
his hold. As a particular favor from Captain Chapman, mine 
was rescued from his clutches and carried up to the cabin. 

You should be aware of this arrangement of your baggage be- 
fore entering the boat. It will often be nearly as much as a 
thing is worth to get it out of a trunk in a hold that has only a 
notched timber, at most, for a ladder. If there be much baggage 
— and every man has a right to two cargas, four trunks — yours 
may be deeply buried up sometimes, and moved about, from 
time to time, as unfortunate passengers, seething in that damp, 
dark oven, with a dim light, tumble it over in search of some 
stray trunk. These visits to the bodega, as they call the hold, 
are terrible. You are covered with perspiration, and ready to 
drop, and at length make up your mind to do without the most 
indispensable articles rather than go to that purgatory for them. 

The Manzanares has a ladies' cabin on the same floor as the 
deck, and, if there are ladies there, they remain by themselves, 
and eat with the gentlemen of their company. The Barran- 
quilla has a little triangular space at the stern that bears the 
name of ladies' cabin. It is very small indeed, but, as they have 
very rarely any female passengers, they make it answer. We 
had only two little girls and their servant, and these slept in 
the principal cabin. There are no berths. They would impede 
the circulation of air. They give you a cot-bedstead, and, if 
you need any bedding, you will probably have it with you. In 
a large boatful there will always be some scrambling for the best 
places, and, if the captain does not interfere actively, the whole 
cabin will be obstructed by beds soon after 6. The rule is not 
to locate any beds before 8. I hung my hammock, with its mus- 
quito-net, and had a very comfortable night's rest. The mus- 
quito-net of a hammock is a large bag inverted, with a couple of 
sleeves for the cords of the hammock to pass through. 

"We are early risers on steamers. We first roll up our bed- 



56 NEW GRANADA. 

ding, and put it where it will not be in danger of being disturb- 
ed. An attendant takes away the cot. Next comes, with us, 
the washing ; but the Granadinos are not in a hurry for this op- 
eration, nor is it always essential to them. It is a little diffi- 
cult to get water, and often more so to obtain a towel, here not 
called toalla, but only pano de manos. They are generally 
made of sheeting, but are embroidered with red at the ends. 

You are next invited to take a drink of anisado. Omitting 
the d in words terminating in a do, they unite the a and o into 
a diphthong like ou in thou. Anisado is thus clipped into an- 
isdu. It is a sort of rum, distilled, I am told, from the seed of 
Anethum Foeniculum, called anis. It is much used on the 
Magdalena. It takes the place of a cup of chocolate, which is 
not easily prepared on board at this hour. I have seen coffee 
used as a better substitute. 

Breakfast comes about 10. It is spread in a small space be- 
tween the cabin and the captain's house, that has a roof over it, 
but is open at the sides. Among other luxuries, they put on 
the table some square soda-biscuit, and butter, that is eagerly 
dipped out with spoons by persons who scarcely know the arti- 
cle by name. It is universally called, in New Granada, mante- 
quilla, a diminutive of manteca, its lawful name, here reserved 
entirely for lard. There is an infinite variety of stews, of beef, 
kid, fowl, etc. The most essential vegetable with me was rice, 
for plantains were dealt out to us with a very sparing hand, 
while the bogas were denied rice and bread altogether, and com- 
pelled to eat plantains. 

It was interesting to see the bogas preparing their dinner. 
The beef they used is cut up, when on the carcass of the ox, 
into ropes of meat, that are rubbed in salt, and hung on a pole 
to dry. This they call tasajo, and a pile of it is enough to sick- 
en one by the mere sight of it. This they cut up in pieces, 
and stewed in a large iron pot mounted on three stones on a fire 
built on deck. Three stones thus arranged — tulpas — are the 
ordinary fire-place of the peasantry here ; in a boat they are, 
of course, placed on a box of earth. They threw in pieces of 
green plantain till the disgusting broth threatened to run over. 
When done, they used the carapax of a turtle for a platter, and 
dipped out the mess, and attacked it with fingers and wooden 



BOGAS' DINNER 57 

spoons, till soon they would be scraping the ribs of the turtle. 
Nothing could sicken me more unless it were a cannibal feast ; 
but one of the passengers told me he would rather have a part 
of their dinner than of ours. 

Fish is a popular food here, but seen rarely on the boat ; it is 
too cheap. On the rivers it is only surpassed in cheapness by 
plantains. It is supposed, contrary to the opinions of Dr. 
Mussey, that fish-eating tends to increase the population. The 
captain showed me a passenger, a resident of Remolino, who 
looked as if he might live to see his progeny greatly increase, 
telling me that he had already some twenty children by the 
same wife, and that this fecundity was owing to the ichthyopha- 
gous habits of the family ! 

We have not yet been over the whole boat. The captain's 
house is a little room, with two little closets, between the dining 
space and the chimney. The dining space would accommodate 
about twenty, but they seldom have so many passengers. 
There is a considerable space of open air around the chimney, 
and then succeeds the pilot-house. The pilots are picked out 
from among the bogas, and are utterly incompetent for their 
duties. The captain and the engineer divide the pilot's respon- 
sibility between them. The pilots are chosen because they 
know the river, its rocks and channel, but the engineer keeps a 
look-out, and stops and reverses without waiting for orders to 
do so. Forward of the pilot-house is a large space covered with 
awning: this is the general sitting-room of the passengers. 
They sometimes annoy the pilot by cutting off his look-out, or, 
rather, he annoys them by calling on them to move. 

The engineer has a little house of his own down on deck. 
His name was Salt, and he was a man far superior to what we 
expect of such a post. On another boat, whenever it was lying 
still, we had the pleasure of the company at table of the Amer- 
ican engineer, his English mate, and his Irish mate's assistant, 
together with a nice-looking negro that was employed on the 
boat in some capacity. The captain can not put himself high 
above his engineers when they can command nearly equal wages 
and need equal abilities ; but they err exceedingly in taking cap- 
tains that have no river experience, good seamen on merchant- 
men, but who have never seen Council Bluffs. 



58 NEW GRANADA. 

Dinner, when it comes, is but a repetition of breakfast. It is 
hasty judging of national character by the conduct at the table 
of a steam-boat, especially when so many nations are represent- 
ed as here. I have seen boats on Western waters with as much 
piggishness at table; but it could hardly be worse served. 
Richard, the steward, was a well-meaning Jamaica negro, but 
his two assistants are very stupid Indian boys. I heard a 
passenger scolding one of them, and I asked him what he had 
done. He replied, " I called for a knife, and, as he was bring- 
ing it, he used it to scrape his arm with ; when I complained of 
that, he wiped it on his pantaloons." It is exceedingly difficult 
to secure good waiters. Ours can hardly understand good Span- 
ish, or make themselves understood. 

The river banks present little variety. It seems much like 
the scenery or want of scenery of the Lower Mississippi, but the 
water, I think, is never so low as to show such elevated banks 
as we see there. We conclude, then, that at high water the 
Mississippi immensely exceeds the Magdalena hi depth. It is 
also wider, and its width is more uniform, and its channel far 
more crooked. After this lapse of time I can recollect no dif- 
ference of color between the Magdalena and the Lower Missis- 
sippi. We make no stops except for wood, or so rarely that 
each one will be chronicled as an event. 

On Wednesday the boat set out from Barranquilla, and tied up 
for the night at Remolino, the station of the Santa Marta boats. 
They call the distance 6 leagues. My rule makes it 21 miles ; 
but if the leagues are new ones, it is much less. They attrib- 
ute the smallness of the journey to a late start, and delays in 
getting out of that little arm of the river on which Barranquilla 
stands. On Thursday, before reaching Calamar, they came 8| 
leagues, say 28 miles. 

They wood but about once a day, and at wood-piles of their 
own. A wood-agent on board discharged so much of the clerk's 
duties as he was going up, that I long mistook the real clerk for 
a passenger. At night they often tied up to a bank far from 
any house. We come to more signs of cultivation as we as- 
cend the river. 

On Friday we stopped at a small town on the west bank. 
We found here the head of the distrito represented by a barn- 



DRESS OF PEASANTRY. 



59 



like edifice, with a roof of thatch and walls of sticks, designed 
to let in the light and air, but keep out all animals as large 
as a hog. In this last office they failed for want of a door. So 
I saw in this very prison a mother with about the same num- 
ber of offspring that John Rodgers had. The grunting parent 
of little swine lay stretched in the abundant black dust, content- 
ed with her lot. Happy the prison that witnesses no sadder 
scenes ! But when a biped is detained here, it is, of course, 
with his locomotive apparatus locked in between two logs — the 
stocks. So, as a man that does not possess " the thumb and 
first finger of the right hand" can not vote, a man that has lost 
both legs can not be imprisoned here until a new apparatus is 
invented to hold him. 

A group of various colors, all ages, and both sexes, and in 
every possible stage of nudity, gathered on shore to look at us. 
From these I select the wife and child of a fustic-cutter as a 

favorable example. She 
is carrying two baskets 
of ivory-nuts in positions 
which the reader is chal- 
lenged to imitate. The 
sleeveless garment that 
covers as much of her as 
she thinks necessary is 
called a camison, an aug- 
mentative of the word ca- 
•misa, as it is nearly twice 
as long as that garment, 
which would be useless 
without another garment 
to eke out its scantiness. 
There would be more 
fidelity, but less beauty, 
had the artist colored their 
bodies according to na- 
ture, diversifying the skin 
of the little one with the 
parti-colored patches with 
which Nature and the accidents of the day had combined to 
adorn it. 




THE FBSTIC-CUTTER'S FAMILY. 



60 NEW GRANADA. 

One of the passengers has pointed out a plantation of cacao 
chocolate-trees. But I am astonished at the boundless contigu- 
ity of shade that is interrupted here and there at long distances 
by the merest bits of patches of plantains or cane. When the 
white man came to the New World to curse it, the banks of the 
Magdalena are said to have been one continuous village from 
Sabanilla to Honda. The cupidity of the Conquerors exterm- 
inated its happy inhabitants. 

On Saturday morning a passenger pointed out what I should 
have taken for an arm of the river coming in at the foot of an 
island. But, though the color was the same, the surface was 
strewn with fragments of vegetation, when none were descending 
the Magdalena. It was the Cauca, escaped from its long and 
terrible conflict with the rocks above, and now pacified to the 
same stately gait as the Magdalena and the Mississippi. 

By Saturday noon we reached the head of the island opposite 
Mompos, formerly spelled Mompox. This is stated as 40J 
leagues from Barranquilla, say 148 miles in four days (for we 
went no farther that day), or, throwing out a day for hinderan- 
ces and stoppages, 50 miles a day. 

Mompos is called the hottest place on the river. Up to here 
some little influence of the sea-breeze is felt, and above, the in- 
crease of altitude diminishes the heat : here the sum of these 
restraining influences on the sun's power is at a minimum. The 
population is about the same in number as at Barranquilla, but 
very different. It is a very old town, and a very religious one. 
The churches are quite numerous, and in a far higher condition 
than the solitary barn-like edifice in Barranquilla. The schools 
are not correspondingly advanced, though a girls' school of the 
higher class was to open the day I left (Sunday). 

I visited the cemetery, one of the best in New Granada. The 
iron fence in front of it is of Granadan workmanship, and was 
much admired by Bolivar. The inscription over it signifies, 
Here are the limits between life and eternity.* There is with- 
in it a very small chapel, as there is in every cemetery of the 
least pretensions. Most of the best tombs were brick vaults, 
called bovedas, built like ovens, with the foot against the wall. 
Some of them are beautifully set off with miniature steeples. 

* Aqui confina la vida con la eteraidad. 



. MOMPOS. 61 

There are some monuments in the ground also, but none of either 
are of a high class of merit. 

Mompos is a town of jewelers and bogas. It stands on an 
island. Perhaps its insular position, making so much land 
accessible to it by canoes, has been the origin of its greatness. 
The steam-boat landing is at the upper extremity of the town, 
above the head of an uninhabited island. Farther down, in 
front of the older part of the town, is the ordinary landing of 
market-boats. An open space adjoining is protected on the 
river side by a wall three feet high, the use of which I can not 
conjecture. It is the market-place. I dread the description of 
the markets of New Granada, and of all that I saw in this I 
will mention only the fruit of the Anacardium occidentale, a 
huge tree called caracoli, which we may translate cashew. It 
is a kidney-shaped nut, with an acrid milk in its rind. The 
stem of this nut becomes a mass of pulp longer and smaller than 
a pear, but it is sour, astringent, and disagreeable. 

At this spot I once witnessed an exciting scene. A French 
lady was going up the river in the steamer Nueva Granada to 
join her husband in Bogota. A French family with which she 
was acquainted was descending, on their way to "la belle 
France." She came on board the Manzanares to chat with 
them, as the boats lay side by side all night. They talked in 
the morning till, before any of them were aware of it, her boat 
had left and was beyond hail. Poor woman! She had not 
even a bonnet to her head nor a dollar in her pocket. Two 
remedies were suggested : one, to take a canoe and follow after 
the JSueva Granada with the vain hope of overtaking her. The 
other appeared more feasible — to take a horse and ride up on 
shore, as there was a slight bend in the river above ; but there 
was no horse at hand. Hundreds became interested in her case, 
and I in their sympathy. She was unknown and a foreigner — 
nothing but a passenger left. It might have moved the mirth 
of a crowd on our docks, but here all were anxious. For half 
an hour nothing else was thought of, and all eyes were turned 
up the river. At length the Nueva Granada appeared round 
the point, and one universal viva broke from the anxious crowd. 
Whether you take this as a testimony in favor of poor human 
nature, which has many amiable traits in common with that of 



62 NEW GRANADA. 

gregarious animals, or in favor of Granadan nature in particular, 
it is honorable to the Momposinos. 

Here we saw the last of certain loaves of bread more than a 
foot in diameter, and about a quarter of an inch thick, very- 
white and tender, but quite insipid. They are cassava, made of 
the starch of a poisonous Euphorbiate root, the Manihot utilis- 
sima. The root also comes on the table quartered and boiled, 
under the name of yuca, but is not to be confounded with the 
Liliate genus Yucca. It is a slow-growing herb or herbaceous 
shrub, and is nearly a year in coming to perfection. It rarely 
flowers, and I have never seen them digging its roots. For a 
substitute for flour, it is grated and then washed in cold water. 

I went into two gardens in Mompos, and was surprised to see 
so many familiar things. The most universal was the common 
balsam or lady's slipper of our gardens, Impatiens Balsamina. 
I saw the Oleander in flower and fruit, and but one new thing, 
a Polygonum, which they call bellisima, a climbing vine with a 
large, permanent petaloid calyx. It would be a splendid acqui- 
sition to our gardens. 

These gardens were the courts of two-story houses. Most of 
the plants were in pots around the court or patio. Perhaps, as 
these were the first regular houses I was in, I may as well de- 
scribe them. A house with but one entrance from the street is 
called a casa claustrada. That one grand entrance is the porton, 
and the space that leads to the inner door is the zaguan. The 
zaguan is always paved. The pavement is often of brick. 
Sometimes it is of small stones, with mosaic figures in it of ver- 
tebrae of oxen or swine. It leads into one corner of a square 
space within the house that has no roof. In the Bible this is 
called the court, and here the patio. A walk — the corredor — 
runs entirely around it. The corredor is separated from the pa- 
tio by a balustrade called pretil. The rooms generally open 
into the corredor, and only the front has windows that do not 
look into the patio. If the house be of two stories, the stairs, 
which are of brick edged with wood, are placed in a recess in 
one corner of the corredor. In a two-story house, casa alta, the 
lower rooms facing on a street are either used for stores or rent- 
ed to poor people, and then they have no connection with the 
patio. These families, who have no rights out of their narrow 



STRUCTUEE OE HOUSES. 63 

rooms save in the streets, are a nuisance to the neighborhood. 
Poor things ! decency is a luxury beyond their means. 

No houses have more than two stories. The casa baja — one- 
story house — is more common and more convenient, if not damp; 
but the casa alta is more pretentious, and is preferred. Anoth- 
er radical distinction is into tiled and thatched houses. Thatch 
is cooler, but exposed to fire, and sure to decay and let in the 
rain when you are unprepared for it. Tile is called teja, and in 
the plural tejas or texas. Thatch is called paja, straw, because 
in Spain it was made of the culms of grasses. Here it is gen- 
erally of the leaves of a pandanate plant, Carludovica palmata, 
which bears the names of iraca, jipijapa, and nacuma. The so-"^ 
called Panama hats are made of the young leaves of this plant, 
which are split fine and dipped in boiling water to make the 
shreds cylindrical. 

These hats are generally a week in braiding, and the fineness 
and price are in proportion to the skill of the braider. The av- 
erage price, as first sold, is estimated at eighty cents. The 
finest have been sold at $50, and even $100. A hat of this 
kind should be called by metonymy thatch rather than " tile.j 
The mature leaves are sold standing by the proprietors of the 
ground for thatch. They spring from the ground on smooth pe- 
tioles eight feet long. The blade looks like that of a palm leaf, 
but the flowers have a striking resemblance to ears of maize. I 
know of no warm lands in New Granada where this useful plant 
does not grow. 

We left Mompos about 8 on Sunday morning, instead of 6, 
as had been intended. They often have to hunt up slack and 
careless passengers who would otherwise be left. Such delays 
astonish, amuse, and vex. We took in tow a champan — a large 
flat-boat with an arched thatched roof. It had its crew of bogas. 
Their women came down to see them off. As they sat on the 
shore, I was struck with the fact that their skirts were all blue. 
I soon found that this color is almost universal in New Granada 
among the lower classes, whether from taste or from the abun- 
dance of indigo I know not ; but this row of women probably 
had cause for looking blue. It is likely that they had danced 
all night, and mayhap attended mass this morning, and now had 
come down to take farewell of the men whose last cuartillo they 



64 NEW GBANADA. 

had helped spend, and who were now taking to the river for 
more money to Ibe spent in the same way. 

Before the day of steam, it used to he impossible to engage a 
crew from below to go above Mompos, nor would any from 
above go lower down, so that every champan was delayed at 
Mompos till a new crew had been shipped, provisioned, and got 
off with no small ado. 

A little above Mompos is Margarita, on the same large isl- 
and. A more paradisaical place to look at I have not seen in 
New Granada. There is no clump of houses, but a long street 
of many miles, with houses on the west side of it fronting the 
river, and buried in orange-trees. In the middle of this long 
succession of ruralities stands the church. To add to the beau- 
ty of the scene, every few rods, gathered on the very brink of 
the river, were groups of little sons of Adam and daughters of 
Eve, in all stages of dress, from that before the fig-leaves to that 
in which modest painters drape their figures. Margarita is about 
fifteen miles above Mompos. The population of the district is 
1827. 

More than thirty miles now pass with no noticeable place, 
but amazing multitudes of children at the water-side under the 
green trees. Then we come to Banco, on the east side of the 
river, fifty miles above Mompos. Here we arrived in the after- 
noon, and stopped to wood. A large, unfinished church, roof- 
less and floorless, filled with vegetation, stands as a monument 
of ambition, and perhaps to date the decline of Romish power. 

Here I saw a great curiosity. It was a long procession of 
ants, every one with a bit of green leaf in his mouth. I under- 
state the matter. There ran through the grass a well-beaten 
road, like a sheep-path, six inches wide — a very Cumberland 
road for ants. It was thronged with busy travelers, all of 
whom were hastening from home, or returning with about half 
an inch square sheared out of a leaf. I followed on to see their 
nest. It was curious to see their broad highway passing under 
logs, stones, and brush-heaps. I followed it for a long distance 
into the woods, and then gave up in despair. These ants are 
called arrieros — the same word that means muleteer. They are 
a terrible pest. It is thought that ant-eating animals generally 
reject this species, on account of four strong, sharp projections 



AEKIERO ANTS. 65 

on the body. They can cany a grain of maize, and I am sure 
that to load a whole colony would demand many bushels. Woe 
to the orange-tree that they have determined to shear of its 
leaves ! The best, if not the only defense, is to make the trunk 
inaccessible to them by water. Some even manage to surround 
their house with a stream of water, and others are driven to de- 
spair by domiciliary visits, clearly in violation of the Constitu- 
tion of 1843, but which neither parchment nor architecture have 
strength to resist. 

I was once sitting in the evening in a house near Tulua, and 
fancied I saw something whitish moving on the floor. I ex- 
amined, and found a broad stream of rice flowing from a large 
jar under a bed ; each grain was in the jaws of an arriero. 
Long before morning the jar would have been empty, for the 
diligent thieves work night and day, without even stopping Sun- 
day. The only hope for the rice was to hang it up in what the 
sailors call a true-lover's knot by a hair rope. In the end, the 
jar fell and broke, and the enemy bore off the contents. But, 
on the whole, I am surprised that so resistless an enemy should 
do no more damage in a country. 

I saw where the ants' highway crossed a human foot-path. 
Of course, many of the little folk must be crushed under the 
feet of the lords of creation. There their green loads were left, 
for no ant picks up the load of another. I found that if the an- 
tenna? of one of these ants were removed, he no longer had the 
power of finding his way. Whether it is by smell, or by 
some analogous sense, I know not, but it is not by sight. I 
have effaced the path of ants with a little chocolate oil, too little 
to impede the feet of the insect, and only for an ant's length in 
extent. On each side were gathered a crowd, at a loss to find 
their way, although their antennas could nearly meet in the mid- 
dle. At length some formic Columbus set the example, others 
followed, and the way was re-established. 

But let us go back to the boat. 

" Do you see that handsome young man — bueno mozo — lean- 
ing against the post ?" asked a fellow-traveler. 

I looked, and saw a nice young man, with a sort of stock on. 
It is called sotacuella. It is a plain parallelogram, about two 
inches wide, more fit for a badge than any thing else, and is of- 

E 



66 NEW GEANADA. 

ten, if not always, of what is called worsted-work. This, and 
the tonsure — a carefully-shaved spot on the crown as large as a 
dollar — are intended to be permanent marks of the sacred posi- 
tion of the wearer. 

" Well," he continued, " that is the Cura of Banco. Young 
as he is, they tell me that he has twelve children that are known 
to be his." 

And a friend that passed Banco some time after mentioned 
incidentally that he witnessed the baptism of a new-born child 
of the cura there. 

Let not the reader start with incredulity, nor turn with a dis- 
gust unmingled with pity from the natural explanation of this 
phenomenon. Let us bear in mind, in the first place, that his 
crime here is not disgraceful in an unmarried man, be he cler- 
gyman or layman. Second, that the anticipation of a chaste 
marriage is one of the main safeguards of virtue in either sex. 
I was talking with an intelligent man on this point, and he 
laughed heartily at a story I told him. It was of a man who 
had reached the age of eighty without ever having been outside 
of the gates of Bagdad. The calif, professing a desire to have a 
proof of the tranquillity of his reign inscribed on a tomb, for- 
bade his ever leaving the city on pain of death. Early the next 
morning, he sent to inquire for the octogenarian, but he had run 
away during the night. Generally, the young aspirant for the 
priesthood is no novice in the school of debauchery, but his very 
vow of chastity would insure its violation, if he were so. 

Again, the confessional is the cause of this evil perhaps even 
more than the celibate. The priest is to know the sins of his 
flock both in deed and of thought. If he suspects a timid one 
of passing over in silence what she ought to confess, it is his 
duty to question her, and hers to answer. The Protestant pas- 
tor can not take the first step toward undue familiarity without 
turning his back on his professional duty. The Catholic priest 
may nearly have completed the ruin of a soul committed to his 
charge before even he himself is fully conscious of the nature of 
his designs. 

Lastly, the position of the female is by no means hedged 
about by those stern laws of decorum established among us. 
Her sin brings her into no lasting disgrace, no total exclusion 



MORALS OF PRIESTS. 67 

from society. I should judge that the shame of her position is 
more like that of a young man in New England, or possibly 
even less. 

So, take it for all in all, a chaste priest here must be an ex- 
ceedingly rare phenomenon. It would be scarce possible for 
human ingenuity or satanic malice to place a man in a position 
where his fall would be more inevitable or irrecoverable. I have 
asked two persons just now what proportion of the priests arc 
unfaithful to their vow. One replied, "About 99 per cent." I 
knew him to be a friend to the priests. I knew that the other was 
not, and his reply must be received with a grain of allowance. 
It was, "Of the secular clergy (parish priests), 98 percent. ; of 
the regulars (monks), 102 per cent. Thus," says he, " the ex- 
cessive licentiousness of the monks is enough to offset any cas- 
ual instance of chastity in the seculars." 

Nor is this liberty of the priests always ill received by the 
people. A woman below here was expressing her horror at the 
idea of a married clergy, and I asked her whether she would 
prefer the Banco priest to a married man faithful to his wife. 
She replied, " Yes ; for the sacraments from the hands of a dis- 
solute priest would retain their validity, but not from those of a 
married one." 

In these days the cura of the isle of Taboga, near Panama, 
has been making arrangements to avail himself of the new law of 
civil marriage. He has lived with the woman he wishes to 
marry many years, and they have children. All this has ex- 
cited no complaint, for men consider their families safer with a 
priest that lives so. But the first step toward legal marriage 
has excited a great hubbub. Even the Panama Star came out 
with a leader in English against him. And, to crown all, the 
Substitute for the Bishop of Panama, who is in exile, informed 
him that he would depose him if he proceeded, so the poor couple 
came to the conclusion that they must go on as before. 

I hear no complaint from the people of the unchastity of their 
priests. Probably they act on the principle of iEsop's entangled 
fox, who would not have the half-sated flies driven away lest a 
hungrier swarm should open new avenues to the vital flood. 
Many years since, indeed, a priest in Bogota had a peculiar pen- 
chant for innocent and artless girls. When he was found to 



68 NEW GEANADA. 

have brought trouble into five or six of the first families of 
the capital almost simultaneously, their indignation broke out 
against him, and he was sent to Rome to be judged. When 
sufficiently penitent or sufficiently punished, he was sent back to 
exercise his sacred functions in Cartagena. 

But I am tired of this painful topic, which, however, I could 
not honestly pass by hi silence. The steamer is off at last from 
Banco, and the motley throng at the landing has again given 
place to the magnificent, interminable forest. 

Up the stream we go. Settlements become thinner, and the 
groups of children rarer and smaller. At last we stop and make 
fast to the bank. The forest is so dense that there is hardly a 
place for the boga to set foot when he leaps ashore to make fast. 
Here grows an immense quantity of a Heliconia, called by the 
people Lengua de vaca — Cow-tongue. It is of that group of 
families including the plantain, arrow-root, and ginger. This is 
the most frequent genus, with those broad, horizontal, veined 
leaves, which, with those of the Palms and the Pandanates, are 
the only striking marks that the scenery, of which it makes a 
part, is certainly tropical. 

On again the next day. All day we go without stopping ex- 
cept to wood. I can not understand how these fertile banks can 
remain, washed almost weekly by the waves from steam-boats, 
but without commerce, and nearly without inhabitant. No 
American would have anticipated such a state of things, so do 
we cling to the maxim of political economy that travel begets 
traffic. The first change in the passenger-list was in the addi- 
tion of our names at Calamar. Next we lost our little girls and 
their nurse, and some other passengers, at Mompos. We may 
have added a name or two there. Now we have reached Puer- 
to National, or Puerto Ocaha, as it is often called, and we must 
suffer some losses, one of which I shall long regret. 

It is that of Senor Gallego and his son Eicardo. Seflor 
Gallego was a political exile from Venezuela, perhaps Governor 
of Maracaibo under Paez. He is going to establish himself at 
Cucuta, on the very edge of Venezuela. He was coming from 
Curacoa, and had applied in vain for permission to come the 
nearest way and bring with him his family, who are at Mara- 
caibo. He has before him some severe land-travel — 40£ miles 



PUERTO NACIONAL. (39 

to Ocana, 71^ to Salazar, and 100 more to San Jose de Cu- 
cuta. 

We stopped in an open field at a distance of three fourths of 
a mile from the town of Puerto Nacional. There is a deserted 
house at the upper end. I made the circuit of the field, where 
I found a climbing fern of a genus occasionally met at home ; 
it was Lygodium hirsutum. A little way above the field was 
the mouth of a small river that determined the site of the land- 
ing at the nearest good bank. The steward (whom I intend to 
immortalize a few pages farther on) had started in a boat up the 
little river to the town before I was aware of it. I walked up 
half way, and was rewarded with a number of curious plants ; 
but it was time to return before coming in sight of the town, 
so I only saw the jport of the "Port of Ocana." 

President T. C. Mosquera states that he has repeatedly seen 
the thermometer at Puerto Nacional at 104° in the shade — the 
highest he has ever seen in New Granada. This he elsewhere 
gives as the mean temperature, although he has stated 86° 6 / as 
the highest mean temperature of New Granada. Codazzi gives 
81° for the mean temperature at Puerto Nacional, which I think 
is none too low. 

Here would be a fine chance for an industrious negro to en- 
rich himself in the ivory-nut trade. These nuts are not the 
fruit of a palm nor a tree, but of a stemless Pandanate, with 
leaves like the cocoa-nut tree. It is unisexual, and the stam- 
inate plant is represented on the following page. The fruit 
grows near the surface of the ground, and at Sabanilla, where 
most of it is exported, it costs about two cents a pound, and 
ought to sell for twice that, at least. 

The figure placed beside the plant to mark its size is a na- 
tive of the banks of the Magdalena in full dress. He is an ap- 
proximation toward the mestizo — half negro and half Indian, but 
neither you nor he will ever know the exact proportions in which 
the blood of three races are mingled in his veins. His hat is 
called, as to its shape, raspon ; as to its material, de palma, 
rama, or cuba, being made from palm-leaves, and not of jipijapa. 
In structure it is de trenza, being braided in a strip and sewed, 
as many are at the North. If you disdain to call the rest of 
his dress pantaloons, it must be called tapa, which term, howev- 



70 



NEW GEANADA. 




IVORY-HUT PLANT. 



er, designates any quantity less than this, down to the size of 
half a fig-leaf. In his right hand, with his paddle — canalete — 
he holds his machete, which he can not do without, and which 
he is too lazy to Ibelt around him. The humble attempt at a 
tassel in which the sheath terminates teaches us that man, even 
in his most primitive state, loves ornament. 

The machete is not for defense against either man or beast. 
He cuts the tangled vines with it as he traverses the forest. It 
is his axe. This, with his canoe, lines, hooks, and nets, are all 
his stock in trade. Add to what is here enumerated a camisa 
and a hammock, and you have his entire wealth. He wishes 



THE CALENTANO. 71 

no more. His fish has cost him no more trouble than to go 
out and dig a hill of potatoes. His plantains come easier 
still. 

Why then should he work ? Indolent and amiable, he might 
be made a good citizen by properly taxing and educating him. 
Armed as you see him with the machete, he never fights unless 
driven to it by the extreme of outrage, and then only in a mob 
— never alone. But when a Granadan mob is once thoroughly 
aroused, it will commit great outrages. He loves, perhaps not 
wisely, but too well, as I should infer from the census of 1851, 
which records that, in the distrito of Puerto Nacional, there 
were 32 married women and 67 births that year. " This great 
fecundity," says Ancisar, "is to be attributed to the vast quan- 
tities of fish they consume." The former marriagerfee of $6 40 
is said to have caused much illegitimacy. 

Now comes another entire day, with only one stop in the edge 
of the dense forest for wood. Above here no steamer can safe- 
ly run at night. At dark we made fast to the western bank in 
tall grass, where they cautioned me against snakes, and I knew 
no better then than to heed their counsel. I succeeded, howev- 
er, in bringing down a stem of cafia brava, which should mean 
wild cane. It is a gigantic grass, the stem of which is herba- 
ceous and not hollow. Sections of it, when young and juicy, 
make admirable pickles, crisp and tender, having no taste except 
what they derive from the vinegar and other condiments. The 
ripe stems serve to make fences and houses, being more than an 
inch in diameter. When in fruit, the panicle at the top of the 
stem is of great beauty, particularly when the wind carries all the 
peduncles to one side, waving them like the streamer of a lance. 
The whole height of the stem is from 12 to 20 feet. 

I have said nothing about the alligators ; but now, as we are 
soon to take leave of that abundant and interesting animal, I 
must give him a paragraph. The caiman is an animal of the 
same genus with the crocodile and the alligator. They infest 
the middle Magdalena to an incredible extent, and in the lower 
part they are as common as the alligator is in our Southern wa- 
ters. They disappear entirely before reaching Honda ; but on 
the sand-bars here there were sometimes half a dozen to be seen 
at once. Swimming is not to be thought of; and even women 



72 NEW GRANADA. 

washing on the shore, unprotected by a fence, are sometimes 
carried off. 

Musquitoes also reach a maximum in the middle Magdalena, 
and disappear entirely before reaching Nare. As mosquito means 
gnat, I did not learn the Spanish for the larger torment to which 
we give that name (mis-spelling it) till the seventh month of 
my journeyings in New Granada. It is zancudo — long-legs. 

Next day we came to San Pablo, one of the most considera- 
ble places on the river. It is about seventy-four miles above Pu- 
erto Nacional, and two hundred and one and a half miles above 
Mompos. "We stopped some time on account of some accident 
to the engines. The place seems larger than Banco, and far 
more pleasant than any little place on the river except Marga- 
rita. The steward here attempted to buy some cocoa-nuts, but 
the owner thought it more agreeable to lie in his hammock than 
to climb for them. The difficulty was arranged by a boga from 
the boat climbing the tree, and the luxurious proprietor secured 
the utile without sacrificing the dulce far niente. I drank the 
milk of one of these nuts, but it did not please me. It was in- 
sipid, with little or none of the peculiar flavor of the nut, but 
rather resembling milk and water when the water preponderates. 
I might have formed a different judgment of it had I been suf- 
fering with extreme thirst. On the whole, the cocoa-palm — 
Cocos nucifera, coco — has seemed to me ornamental rather than 
useful in New Granada ; but the tree should only be judged of 
by the sea-shore, for it leaves the level of the sea with reluc- 
tance, and is the first useful plant that forsakes man in his as- 
cent of the mountains. 

Here too I met, outside of the town, an abundance of a fruit- 
tree, smaller and more slender than an apple-tree, with a smooth 
bark like the button-wood (Platanus occidentalis), and a fruit 
about the medium size of an apple, crowned, like it, with the re- 
mains of the calyx. It is the guava — Psidium pomiferum — call- 
ed here guayabo, and the fruit guayaba. As a general thing, 
the names of trees are masculine, and end in o, while the fruits 
are feminine, and end in a. Thus an orange-tree is naranjo, and 
an orange naranja. The name of a place where things grow 
ends in al : thus this guava orchard is a guayabal. I never saw 
or heard of a naranjal, for no man has orange-trees enough to 



GUAVA AND ICACO. 73 

deserve the name. The interior of a guava is hard pulp, full of 
seeds, surrounded by a harder seedless portion. Both are eat- 
en, and often also the skin, though this is generally rejected, 
and sometimes also the outer portion. There are other Psidia 
here, but this is the most abundant fruit in all New Granada. 
I have never seen it cultivated, nor is it eaten extensively, ex- 
cept in jellies and conserves. Such preserves are sold put up 
in square boxes which might hold a pint, and which looked as 
if they might have been made with a broad-axe. The instru- 
ment used in their construction was probably a cooper's adze. 
The fruit is eagerly eaten by swine, and is often so abundant as 
to be of importance on this account. 

Another small tree attracted my attention, perhaps the only 
rosaceous plant of the low country, or tierra caliente. No En- 
glish terms satisfy me for the four gradations of altitude, tierra 
caliente, tierra templada, tierra fria, and paramo. The cessa- 
tion of the cocoa might mark the upper limit of tierra caliente, 
the banana may cease with the tierra templada, and barley and 
potatoes with the tierra fria. The uncultivable land above is 
paramo. Now there are many blackberries, the strawberry, and 
some species of cratagus and spirsea in tierra fria, and I have 
even found a blackberry down to the edge of the tierra caliente ; 
but here was a rosaceous tree belonging to tierra caliente only. 
It was Chrysobalanus Icaco, here called icaco. It is a plum, 
used in one of those innumerable kinds of sweetmeats called 
dulce. I described the flesh of the preserve as cotton and sir- 
up, and my hostess suggested that a third ingredient was at- 
mospheric air ; but, after disposing of the sarcocarp, the endo- 
carp easily resolved itself into three valves under a gentle force 
of the teeth, leaving the seed in the mouth, a miniature almond, 
on which alone, I think, the icaco relies for the popularity it en- 
joys- 

Just as I was leaving this tree, after our long detention was 
over, a man came to me to prescribe for his sick wife. I was 
glad that the summons of the boat saved me farther excuse ; but, 
if a man aims at popularity here, he might well bring with him 
a small stock of medicines, and particularly those used in miti- 
gating the penalties that outraged nature visits on licentiousness. 

Arrived on board, I found a new fruit to attract my attention. 



74 NEW GEANADA. 

I should have called it a crazy orange, but it bears the name ot 
limon dulce — sweet lemon. It is an orange with a thick rind, 
green even when ripe, and filled with a copious gummy oil, that 
obliges you to wash your hands as soon as you peel one. This 
alone greatly reduces its value, and its insipid sweetness has lit- 
tle attraction for Northern palates, but people here value them 
more than oranges. The carpels separate from each other much 
more readily than those of the orange. It must be a variety 
of Citrus Limetta or Citrus Aurantium. 

For some time after leaving San Pablo our voyage seemed to 
be without events to chronicle. Day passes after day without 
receiving or leaving a passenger or an article of freight. Once 
a day we stop for wood. Perhaps the space of an acre has been 
cut over, and may have been cultivated, but has again run up 
to weeds. Two miserable sheds — ranchos — serve to protect the 
occupants, who can not be called a family, from dew and rain. 
A part of a raceme of plantains, the staff of life, hang under one 
roof, and a few ears of maize constitute the remainder of their 
store. All their furniture is summed up in a few coarse earthen 
vessels (perhaps made on the spot), and some of totuma or cala- 
basa. This last is a huge fruit of the gourd family, and has 
given origin to the English word calabash. The name ought 
not to be applied to the totuma, which is a much smaller fruit, 
made only into dishes and spoons, all made of half a fruit or 
less ; but the calabasa needs but a small opening made into it, 
and it is cleaned out by rinsing with water if the orifice be too 
small for the hand. In a word, calabashes are substitutes for 
kegs, jugs, and bottles ; totumas for dishes, bowls, and spoons. 
Ask for a totuma of water, and they will give you what you 
need to drink. Ask for a calabasa of water, and they will pro- 
pose to lend you or sell you a calabasa to hold a supply of wa- 
ter to take with you. 

Totumas grow on the Totumo, Crescentia Cujete, a tree about 
the size of an apple-tree. The first I saw was at Barranquilla, 
where I was nearly knocked down while chasing a butterfly by 
bringing my head in contact with a fruit of nearly the same size, 
which had escaped my notice by being of the same color as the 
leaves. A section of a small one answers for a spoon ; bowls 
made of halves of larger ones are sold at from one to three cents 



NAKE. 75 

apiece. In Pasto they ornament and varnish them, and then 
they are sold all over the country at a much higher price. 

As you ascend the river population decreases. The villages 
grow smaller, and you forget to inquire their names, even when 
they are few and far between. There is also a sensible diminu- 
tion in the proportion of children, suggesting an infant mortal- 
ity equaled only in the vicinity of still-slops and " pure country 
milk." 

Mountains appear in the distance, now on one hand and now 
on the other, gradually coming nearer and nearer, till at length 
they are seen on both sides at once, a sure indication that the 
alluvial region of the Magdalena is narrowing as we ascend. 
There is now and then a bluff of thirty feet in height, but I have 
generally seen the banks of a height varying from eight feet to 
two or three. The width of the river has diminished one half, 
till it is less than the Ohio or the Hudson at Albany. The 
current has been growing a little more rapid, but here at last is 
something new. The river is compressed by rocks on both 
sides, and for a few rods is quite rapid. This is the Angostura 
de Nare — the Narrows of Nare. It is the eleventh day of the 
trip, and our confinement has just reached the term of a Liver- 
pool voyage. 

The river widens again, and soon the boat enters the mouth 
of a smaller river of clear water. It is the River of Nare, and 
we make fast to the bank. It is so long since we have seen 
any clear water, that the passengers eagerly seize on it. 

O formose puer ! nimium ne credas colori ! 
I doubt very much the superiority of the new beverage. I 
doubted then ; I distrust now. Many who ascend the Magda- 
lena are taken sick at Nare or soon after, and some die there. 
I suspect that the clear water has something to do with this. 
At all events, there can be no better water in the world to drink 
than the turbid streams of the Magdalena and the Missouri. 
The steam-boats keep their water in large jars of brown earthen- 
ware, holding perhaps half a barrel or more. They are called 
tinajas. There are always two or more, so that the water has 
time to settle. Sometimes there is a filter made of porous 
stone, holding two gallons, which lets it drip slowly into the 
tinaja beneath. 



76 NEW GRANADA. 

The luxury of cold water is and must always be unknown 
here. Deep wells and uniform springs retain the average tem- 
perature of the year, which, in the temperate zone, is much low- 
er than that of a summer's night ; so the earth treasures up for 
us, at home, the coolness of winter for the refreshment of our 
summer-heats, hut in the tropics this resource fails us. To get 
cool water, we must ascend the mountains till the air becomes so 
cool that the water almost ceases to be a luxury. 

There are no houses at the mouth of the Nare. There were 
only a store-house — bodega — and a wood-shed. Both are since 
leveled to the ground, and boats now stop only at the town, 
half a mile or so above. While waiting for dinner I went up 
to the town. It is the last mentionable place before you get to 
Honda. It is a desolate range of mud huts, and a wretched 
plaza, with a small church on it, as usual. It is all the worse 
for having a back street and cross streets. We found the peo- 
ple dressed up because it was Saint Somebody's day. This 
made the bad place look somewhat better. One little fellow, who 
was too small to need clothes, attracted my attention as a re- 
markably fine specimen of a frequent disease, said to be pro- 
duced by earth-eating, called jipitera : such a person is called a 
barrigon, from the great enlargement of the abdomen. No soon- 
er did he see my four eyes (spectacles included) bent on him, 
than he ran bellowing into the house. 

After dinner I went out to look for plants. I went far and 
found few. The land road from Antioquia Medellin and Rio 
Negro terminates at Nare, or at a depot — bodega — on the Nare 
a mile or two up. The boundary of the province of Antioquia 
itself crosses the Nare some distance up, extends down the north 
bank to the Magdalena, and follows the west bank of the Mag- 
dalena down for some leagues. The spot we are on is in Mari- 
quita, a name which is a diminutive of that of the Virgin. The 
provincial Legislature has just tried, by an unconstitutional law, 
to change the name to Marqueta. The limits between Antio- 
quia and Mariquita have never been settled. It will be seen be- 
low why I wish to establish my good character for geography. 
Well, I started up toward the Bodega de Antioquia by land. 
I found a little path, impracticable for mules, and followed it a 
mile without finding any thing worth seeing except some mon- 



IN THE WOODS. 77 

keys scrambling over the tree-tops. An awkward chap is the 
monkey, sprawling his five long limbs (his tail is prehensile) 
in different directions, holding on by one, two, or more of them, 
and reaching off amazingly for new points of attachment. That 
old lady, with one of her lovely progeny clinging to her in af- 
fectionate embrace, tranquilly imbibing its nourishment, has 
no scruples of delicacy at exhibiting her rarest feats of climb- 
ing thirty feet above our heads. But bring the monkey down 
to the ground, and chain him, cage him, or turn him loose, 
and you make him a chattering idiot, a mischievous fool, and 
the most utterly disgusting creature ever made in caricature of 
man. 

I was turned back by the approach of night. I had returned 
nearly to the boat, and the sun had "gone in" so long that it 
yielded no indication of the points of the compass, when I sud- 
denly lost my path. I retraced my steps to a spot that I knew 
I had passed in going, and then turned boatward and lost my 
way at the same point. I grew alarmed, for night was on me, 
and my pocket compass was in New York ! Just as I had 
made my third attempt to extricate myself by a posteriori in- 
vestigations, and was in the full tide of speculation as to the 
nocturnal occupations of the tenants of the wilderness, from the 
musquito to the "tiger" and "lion" of South America, I saw two 
of my fellow-passengers gunning. 

How came I lost ? The path probably made one turn that I 
had taken without observing it. Before I came to the river 
again, that, too, had turned in the same direction, and when I 
saw it my error of meridian was confirmed. In returning, all 
my caution was aroused. I took not a step at a venture, and, 
when my road turned again directly to the boat, I would not fol- 
low it a step, for it carried me in a direction opposite to that in- 
dicated by my imagination. 

We were under way in the morning with a diminished num- 
ber of passengers. We were just eight men and two boys. A 
fine view, this, of the passenger business on the main thorough- 
fare of New Granada ! A longer interval than usual, too, had 
passed since the last boat ; not less, I think, than three weeks. 

We had left Nare three hours behind us when we ran plump 
into a sand-bank. Here I did injustice to Captain Chapman, 



78 NEW GRANADA. 

and I am sorry for it. He was a good seaman, and had omitted 
nothing he could contribute to the comfort of his passengers, and 
to mine especially ; but he knew nothing of low water on the 
Ohio. I, who have been on more bars than I hope ever to be 
again, looked on his operations with perfect amazement, till I 
came to the conclusion that he wished to stay there. Once we 
were fairly afloat, but one awkward manoeuvre fixed us. The 
next that I saw, twenty bogas stood in three feet of water, on 
the lower side of the boat — which lay obliquely to the stream 
— pushing against the current. They carried out hawsers, and 
they slipped. They tied them better, and broke them. The 
spar with which a resolute Ohio captain would crawl over two 
feet of dry bar, was unknown to them. There we lay, and we 
lay all day. 

At night we were notified that we were to leave the boat ear- 
ly next morning in the champan that had been towing more 
than a week at our stern filled with idle bogas. Now com- 
menced a packing-up, and it was like the sack of a city for con- 
fusion. All languages were put in requisition. One question 
would begin with " Where is — ," the next with "Donde esta — ," 
another with " Ou est — ," " Wo ist — ." Only the Italian was 
precluded from the use of his mother tongue. It was at bed- 
time only that the Babel became quiet, and our twelfth day on 
the boat was at an end. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE CHAMPAN. 



Bogas. — Farewell to Steam. — Trying to be " down sick." — The Hammock. — 
Our Prison. — On short Allowance. — Plank-making. — Platanal. — Chocolate. — 
Buena Vista. — On Shore. 

The champan, which had been forgotten for so many days, 
early became the object of universal attention. It had been in- 
tended for the short distance not navigable by steam, and it was 
only after great diplomacy that terms could be found on which 
all parties could agree for a greater amount of service. No task 
is more disagreeable than to negotiate with bogas, and this 



80 



NEW GEANADA. 




PASSENGEE LIST. 81 

morning the bargain was to be reconducted. In the course of 
the discussion, the bogas made a show of returning the baggage 
to the boat, selecting for the demonstration some light, bulky 
articles. 

It is time now to describe the champan. It is much larger 
than a bongo, being, in fact, a flat boat with an arched roof — tol- 
do (the same word describes also a musquito-bar, a bed-curtain, 
and a tent), woven of poles and thatched with palm leaf. The 
ends are open to the air ; the width of the boat is about 7 feet, 
and the length of the covered part may have been 15 or 20 feet. 
It contained but one article of freight, a hogshead of crockery, 
but our baggage seemed to nearly fill it. One passenger, how- 
ever, contrived to keep a portion of the floor free from trunks by 
spreading his bed down upon it. As for myself, I paid little 
attention to matters, as I was suffering from a distressing diar- 
rhea, the result, perhaps, of the beautifully clear Nare water with 
which we regaled ourselves. I ate nothing this morning before 
starting ; the others took only a cup of chocolate. 

A Bogota Yankee and his son remained with his large and 
varied lot of freight on board the steamer. There were eight of 
us, then, consigned to the tender mercies of an uncivilized horde 
of bogas, most of them absolutely naked, governed by a patron 
of a little higher grade, who, with his woman — patrona — occu- 
pied the open stern — popa — of the boat ; and all that repre- 
sented the owners of the boat — captain, clerk, steward, cook — 
all was supplied by Richard (the steward — a Jamaica negro) 
and Manuel, a stupid Indian boy, who scarce understood any 
Spanish ! I complained of this to the captain, but he told me 
that even what he did was a favor and not an obligation, done 
at a great expense, and that it was optional to take the champan 
or wait the rise of the river in the boat. My complaint, then, 
was groundless. 

It is time now to introduce to the reader these seven fellow- 
prisoners and victims with whom I was now brought into so 
close and involuntary an intimacy. They were, 

1. A little Granadan of the name of Lara, who lived in Hon- 
da. He spoke Spanish only. 

2. A Frenchman who had been in Jamaica, and spoke En- 
glish and Spanish well. He was a sort of apothecary. 

F 



82 NEW GRANADA. 

3. His son, a thievish little rascal, speaking Spanish and 
French. He would read all the children's tracts I would lend 
him, and stole from under my mattress some anti-Catholic tracts 
I had there, which I did not think best to lend. 

4. Another Frenchman, a Bogota tailor — a nice man — speak- 
ing French and Spanish. 

5. A fine young Italian, named Dordelli, nephew to a mer- 
chant in Bogota. He was going from there to establish a branch 
of his house in Cucuta. He was a naturalist and my especial 
friend. He spoke French and Spanish. 

6. A Dutch violinist, who had been in the United States with 
Sivori, and was now going through the American Tropics. He 
was a gentlemanly man, but unprincipled and miserly to excess. 
He spoke Low Dutch, German, English, French, and a little 
Spanish. 

7. His companion, a pianist, an easy, over-generous man, who 
had given up all the financiering operations to his more penuri- 
ous partner ; he spoke the same languages, and also Latin to me 
when we wished the Frenchman, No. 2, not to understand us. 

There never had been very strict discipline on the steam-boat. 
Here there was and could be none except that of the patron over 
the bogas. These all assembled in the front open space, the 
proa — forecastle ; and one of them began a prayer, which all the 
rest finished. I could never determine whether this prayer was 
in Latin, Spanish, or Lengua Franca. 

Then most of them sprung to the roof, seized their palancas 
(described on page 39), and commenced pushing against the 
bottom of the river, and walking toward the stern, shouting, Us! 
us ! us ! us ! us ! us ! us ! till they could go no farther. Their 
cry was tremendous. Oh for some method incapable of exag- 
geration, like the photographic process, to record it and compel 
belief! A pack of hounds may make as much noise in some 
given half hour as a crew of bogas, but these continue it, only 
with the intermissions of eating and crossing the river, from 
daybreak till night. They shout, and jump on the toldo over 
your head till you might fancy them in battle and repelling 
boarders. 

Sad indeed was the sight to me, sick and dispirited, to see 
the boat slowly disappearing around a bend of the river. Bar- 



SICK IN HAMMOCK 83 

barism was carrying me away from civilization, and when or 
how was I destined to see its like again ? I turned and went 
in, for a horizontal position and quiet were the only remedies in 
my power. Horizontal position and quiet ! how could I obtain 
either? I found Lara's bed empty, and I lay down on it. I 
lay there till he came, and, fearing to lose his ill-founded claim, 
requested me to leave it. I found another space as large, which 
Richard had been busy in, now unoccupied, and I would have 
at once spread my hammock on it as a bed, but the little French 
boy was asleep on it, and I would not disturb him. While 
waiting for him to waken, his father took formal possession of 
the spot in question by unrolling his bed on it. None had leis- 
ure to sympathize with me, and I roused myself, and I roused 
the boy too, and called to Richard to sling my hammock. 

"No hammock can be slung in this champan," says the 
Frenchman. 

"But I must lie down, for it is impossible for me to remain 
up longer," I replied. 

No others offered any objection, and the hammock was soon 
slung, in nobody's way, close up under the toldo, over a pile 
of baggage at the side of the boat, and I was in it. I wish 
my best friend might some day receive, in recompense for some 
great and good action, an equal gratification. I was as much 
out of the way of all the rest as though I had fallen overboard 
and drowned, and it was all the same to them. I remained in 
my hammock, with little intermission, twenty hours, and rose 
entirely recovered. 

And here I feel it my duty to detain my reader while I pay 
a debt of gratitude to my hammock. High in the scale of phys- 
ical comforts I place the hammock. A clean bed in the filthiest 
hovel, no refuge for the odious bug, unscalable by the nimble 
flea, it offers a glorious sleep to the traveler, when sleep would 
be impossible without it. Hung up in the forest between two 
trees, I have slept dry and warm when the rain was falling in 
torrents. When musquitoes in clouds have presented their 
bills like hungry creditors, I have taken refuge beneath its im- 
passable toldo, and converted their threats into soporific music. 
Many is the time, by night and by day, that I have read to keep 
awake, or read to get asleep, in my hammock without feeling any 



34 NEW GRANADA. 

of those inconveniences of holding my book, having my head too 
low, or a violent bend in the neck, or any other disagreeables 
that attend on reading in bed. But were there such a thing as 
a hot night in New Granada (one of those oven-like nights that 
has driven many of my readers from their beds to sprawl them- 
selves — unpoetic objects — on hard floors), then the hammock 
could show itself in its transcendency ; but till I return to the 
land of long days and short nights, this virtue must lie dormant 
in my dear hammock, like all the imaginable virtues of an infant. 

My saddle-bow shall always have a place to tie my ham- 
mock. I hope never to be without a hammock again. No house 
should be finished without abundant facilities for hanging them, 
for the only inconvenience of a hammock is its length, and the 
necessity of two points of attachment at sufficient distance and 
height from whence to depend its length. What feats, both of 
ingenuity and climbing, have I performed in places where it was 
"impossible to hang a hammock!" But let us return to the 
champan. 

A boat 30 or 40 feet long, with baggage piled on both sides, 
with an alley-way of less than three feet in the middle, would 
be a tolerable prison for seven men, a boy, two servants, the pa- 
tron, the patrona, and an uncounted lot of bogas, although these 
last had no rights under or aft of the toldo. But there was a 
sad drawback on this. There were three beams running across 
the top of the boat, from side to side, too low to creep under 
and too high to step over, so that, in fact, we were penned up 
like animals in a cattle-show. 

Such was our home, or our prison, from Monday till Satur- 
day. Once or twice a day we came to land when the bogas' 
dinner was boiled enough, but as soon as it was eaten they pray- 
ed again, and on they went again with an us ! us ! us ! us ! us ! 
us ! uh I I ! jumping and screaming. One black rascal had a 
string tied round his waist, and tied to it his trunk key. So 
he has clothes, it seems, somewhere ; but when a man has put 
every rag he has in the world into his trunk, in what pocket 
shall he put his key? A knotty question, which the fellow 
seems to have solved completely. 

But the most amazing problem of political economy I ever 
tried to solve is how to nerve a naked vagabond up to almost 



THE BOGA. 35 

superhuman exertions, day after day, in a land where starva- 
tion is impossible. The boga's task used to be to push his 
huge champan against a violent current up stream, from Mom- 
pos to Honda — a month's dire task of twelve hours' dreadful la- 
bor every day, except two or three accustomed stops, where nei- 
ther promises, threats, blaspheming, nor pistols could start him 
a particle ; but you may as well inquire why a man will be a 
poet, a naturalist, or a book-maker, with the certainty of hard 
labor and bad pay, as a boga. Boga nascitur. 

The truth seems to be that our boga is a great sensualist. 
He has his finery and embroidered shirts, and he must have his 
dances and drinking frolics. We may suppose him, then, to 
arrive home with an amount of money that the upland Indian 
never has seen ; but his old debts, and one or two benders, 
make short work with it. Then he resorts to borrowing till 
that resource is exhausted, and again he must get a champan ; 
but I must forewarn my readers that the borrowing part of the 
business will not go far, for the credit system is not well un- 
derstood in low latitudes. So the river-craft is based on the 
vice and improvidence of its victims. I see many analogies be- 
tween bogas, the deck-hands of the Mississippi, and common 
sailors. The Millennium would involve the reconstruction of 
many classes of society. 

Generally, in all parts of the Magdalena, one bank is steep 
and the other shallow. The champan chooses the latter, and, 
when it changes to the other side of the river, we must cross it. 
All the men on the toldo jump down forward, and each one 
takes his paddle — canalete. Then we have an intermission of 
the noise till they are again at their poles. Some of them stand 
in the proa all the time, and push there. These occasionally 
exchange the pole for the hook — gancha — and thus, at times, 
manage to pass a small turn of steep bank, and save crossing 
the river twice, which is always effected with a great loss of 
ground. 

One of the greatest trials of life used to be to manage the bo- 
gas in ascending from Mompos to Honda. It is almost impos- 
sible to hurry them ; sometimes they desert, sometimes rebel. 
The laws now give you even less control of them than former- 
ly; and, unless the navigation of the Magdalena is specially pro- 



86 NEW GEANADA. 

tected, it is quite likely that it may be impeded, delayed, and 
rendered more costly by the change. The tendency of the ultra- 
republicanism now springing up is to protect the vagabond, but 
this must soon reach its limit. 

We always ate while the boat was going, and, as the kitchen 
was nothing but a frame filled with earth in the popa, with tul- 
pas, our meals could not, even had we wished it, been simulta- 
neous with those of the bogas. In fact, we preferred taking 
their meal-time for a little ramble on shore. In one of these 
rambles with Dordelli I came upon two men at work, a really 
strange sight in this land. With the most shocking substitute 
for axes they had cut down a large tree, hewn it four-square, and 
were now cutting a deep groove on the upper side, like a trough. 
They showed me a similar but deeper groove on the under side, 
and told me that when these two grooves met in the middle 
they would have two planks — a hard way of making lumber. 
I think they were to make part of a champan. This was the 
only instance of men at work that I saw between Cartagena and 
Bogota, except one man making a fish-net at a town on the Mag- 
dalena. 

We were gone longer than we expected, and found the com- 
pany all waiting for us. We had left them under the impres- 
sion that they were going up to a house to buy provisions, which 
they did not. They were little satisfied with our delay, as the 
bogas had been fighting while they were waiting, and it was 
feared that they would go no farther for some hours. However, 
in a little while they prayed again, and were in as good starting 
order as ever. After this they contrived their midday halt 
generally on an island, or in shallow water, where they would 
wade ashore to eat, leaving us in the boat. 

But of nothing can I complain so much as of the Jamaica ne- 
gro, Eichard, who was our steward. He seemed determined to 
carry economy to the utmost. He had now turned cook, though 
I imagine any one of our number would have shown more sci- 
ence in the matter. Nothing was to be had. Frequently the 
whole meal for eight of us was a single fowl and hard crackers. 
Nay, he even complained that the "gentlemen used too much 
sugar in their coffee" (milk we had none in all the voyage), and 
undertook the task of sweetening it for us. As for fruit or 



SHOET ALLOWANCE. 87 

other luxuries, there was none to be had. Save a green pine- 
apple that I saw at one of our stopping-places, I saw neither 
fruit nor fruit-tree after leaving San Pablo. And here we were, 
almost without resources, and with no remedy but to advance. 

At length the conduct of the Frenchman, No. 2, became intol- 
erable. At one of our scant meals of one chicken, he, in virtue 
of his post next the popa, seized on nearly half of it for himself 
and his boy. I came next, and then Dordelli, but we always 
passed it on without taking any ; this time it came back to us 
with one diminutive joint of a wing, which Dordelli took ; it was 
no object to either of us, and I fasted till the next meal. To 
prevent the recurrence of this injustice, the pianist at the next 
meal took his seat by the Frenchman. Certainly so little of 
manly fairness could not have been found in any class of people 
that I have any knowledge of. 

About this time a tree on the banks attracted my attention 
from its frequency and its singular port. It was sometimes 30 
feet high, with a hollow stem, and large peltate leaves on the ex- 
tremities only of the branches. The flower resembled an im- 
mense catkin of a willow or birch. They call it guarumo. It 
is Cecropia peltata. 

Once again we all went ashore in hopes of buying something 
to eat. After passing through a skirting of wood, we came to 
a platanal or plantain-field. I know of nothing in nature more 
majestic than a platanal. The real stem of the platano, Musa 
paradisiaca, is not developed, but a false trunk of fibrous foot- 
stalks of leaves rises 10 feet high, and is 6 or 8 inches in diam- 
eter. It is important to know whether the fibre of this huge 
herbaceous stem can be made into paper. It is sometimes used 
for strings. The blades of the leaves are 6 or 8 feet long and 
2 feet wide. Horses eat them greedily. The plants are about 
a dozen feet apart, and when one is cut down a shoot springs up 
that again matures in about a year. From the summit springs 
out a spike of flowers that develops into a raceme (racimo) of 
fruit three feet long, and as heavy as a man can conveniently 
carry. The fruits are seedless, an inch in diameter or more, 
and, in the harton, 8 inches long. The skin comes off read- 
ily, and, when ripe, the fruit is good both raw and every way it 
can be cooked. It is roasted for bread, and tastes something 



88 NEW GKANADA. 

like cake or sweet potato, but softer and sweeter than the last. 
It is generally eaten green, roasted or boiled, and is then insipid, 
and to me abominable. 

The banana, guineo (Musa coccinea and M. sapientium), is 
known in our Northern cities. As a fruit it is better than the 
plantain, but is insipid when cooked, and is useless when not 
ripe. It grows like the platano, but the stem is purple, and 
the fruit shorter. It is not much cultivated. There is a be- 
lief that it will kill one to eat guineos and drink spirits too soon 
thereafter. I never" tried it. There are other species or varie- 
ties of Musa, but they are little cultivated. The dominico, said 
to be Musa regia, is very good, but smaller, and, to my taste, in- 
ferior to the banana. It is useless to enter a platanal in hopes 
to find ripe fruit in it. I never have seen a single raceme in 
my life that I have not been directed to. The reason must be 
improvidence ; they raise rather fewer than they need, so that 
they are generally eaten as soon as they get their growth. 

We proceeded half a mile through the platanal, and came to 
a house or hut where lounged and sat two or three half-naked 
lazy mortals. Here I saw, for the first time, the cacao-tree 
which yields chocolate. The first thing that strikes the behold- 
er is the strange way that the fruit is stuck against the side of 
the tree or the larger limbs, projecting horizontally, as if stuck 
endwise on a peg. The flower, too, would be curious were it 
larger, having some little extras about it, as Byttneriate flowers 
generally have ; but they are small, and, in the cacao, white. 
The fruit is six or seven inches long, and three or four in diam- 
eter. It is ribbed like a melon, but never opens. It is knock- 
ed off when it appears to the eye to be ripe ; two or three, per- 
haps, from a tree, are as many as will be ripe at the same time. 
Children carry them in their hands to a central heap, that grows 
from day to day, till enough is collected to make a batch. 

Then come the man, his wife, all the boys and girls, all the 
babies and dogs. The effective force surrounds the pile. Two 
of them draw their machetes, and begin opening the fruit. They 
apply the word mazorca equally to an ear of Indian corn or a 
fruit of cacao, only the granos of one are on the outside and those 
of the other within. The man gives the mazorca three cuts 
lengthwise, not so deep as to injure the precious seeds within, 



CACAO AND CHOCOLATE. 89 

and tosses it over to the softer sex and smaller fry. They tear 
it open with their claws, and find within the thick fleshy rind a 
central cavity, from the centre of which rose a column with 
the seeds attached ; but when ripe, the whole is reduced to a 
pulp, in which the large seeds are packed so compactly that 
they alone, if thrown in loosely, would be more than sufficient 
to fill the entire cavity. These they separate a little from the 
pulp, and throw them into a tray, upon a skin, or on some plan- 
tain leaves. The pulp is as agreeable in taste as any fruit we 
have, but, as it is difficult to get a spoonful from a fruit that con- 
tains a pint of seeds, it is not worth the trouble of eating. They 
often suck it off the seeds as they get them out. If the seeds 
are to be loaded on a mule, they are put into a guambia, a bag 
made of net-work. As the meshes are large enough to let po- 
tatoes through, it requires some management to fill it with seeds 
of cacao. First you put in pieces of plantain leaf, and upon 
them the quantity of cacao they will hold. Pieces of leaf are 
added to the edges of the first, overlapping freely, till, when it is 
full, the whole guambia appears lined with leaf. Arrived home, 
they are put into a trough — canoa — and left to ferment till the 
seed is freed from what appears to be an aril or false covering. 
Then it is spread on a skin in the door-yard to dry. 

It is prepared by grinding on a warm, flat stone, by the appli- 
cation of another stone, held, like a rolling-pin, in both hands, 
but not rolled. The stone has under it a place to put coals, 
and it is heated to about 120°. Maize is always ground on this 
stone. The cacao is first ground alone, and then with a coarse 
sugar, to which dried bread is sometimes added, for a cheap ar- 
ticle for the poor. This kind I have sometimes eaten in bulk. 
Cho-co-la-te is made into tablas, or cakes, of from an ounce to 
an ounce and a half, the quantity to which two ounces of water 
are to be added for a cup. They are boiled together, generally 
in a small brass jar — olleta— and, before pouring out, as much 
of it is reduced to foam as possible by making a grass-stem, on 
which portions of the roots are left, to revolve rapidly, as in 
beating eggs. 

The cacao loves the tierra caliente. Its price varies exceed- 
ingly, being often dearer than in New York, and sometimes ten 
cents per pound, or less. It is never so cheap as to be an un- 



90 NEW GRANADA. 

profitable crop. It is generally sold in the seed, and ground by 
the family that use it. 

In all these days we saw but one town. It was Buenavista, 
near the mouth of the Rio Negro, that rises below and west of 
the great plain of Bogota. A wagon-road may yet follow this 
river down, and near here may be the future port of Bogota. 
At present there is here only a large, straggling town of mud 
and thatch. I saw a champan partly made here, from which it 
is inferrible that there are here men who work sometimes. I 
saw, too, a garden that had been, but the gate was broken down, 
and the whole area was filled with tall weeds. The utter neg- 
lect of horticulture is inexplicable, but may arise from the im- 
possibility of preserving the crop from theft. Except the gar- 
den of Don Miguel Caldas, at Bolivia, in the hills above Vijes. 
many miles from any ordinary inhabitants, the few gardens I 
have seen have padlocks. Be it as it may, there are no gar- 
den-thieves at Buenavista. Children are very scarce here: in 
all the upper river they have been very few — a striking con- 
trast to the crowds that lined the banks of the lower river. The 
absence of children may explain the grass-grown, desolate quiet 
of these towns, which seem like decayed places that have no 
future. 

On Friday the river became more tortuous and rapid. On 
our left, on the west bank of the river, and not very far from 
Honda, we saw a mountain range of the boldest description. 
High on the summit were enormous perpendicular precipices, 
seen in clear profile against the sky. Barely can we place our- 
selves in a situation to get a profile view of a single precipice, 
but the top of a distant mountain-ridge so set off looks more 
like cloud than rock. 

We have passed several avisperos. I know not whether they 
are nests of wasps or hornets ; but the bogas show them great 
respect, passing them in entire silence. Should we unfortunate- 
ly disturb them, we would have to fall back and let them get 
quiet again, unless we could cross over and pass on the other 
side. 

About this time we passed Conejo, where Richard's reign 
and our torment were to have commenced, had the boat not 
grounded. From here it would have been quite tolerable, and 



FIRST PEDESTRIAN TRIP. 91 

it may even have happened that the boat would ascend entirely 
to the Vuelta, which a good, light-draft boat ought to reach at 
any time in the year. Some boats leave the passengers to make 
their way from Conejo or La Vuelta as they can. Ours carried 
us to the very head of navigation. 

At last, on Saturday morning, I was called from my ham- 
mock and asked to decide whether I would submit to another 
day's imprisonment or walk to Honda. It did not take mo 
long to decide. The two Hollanders were of the same mind, 
and we hastily closed our seventeen days' voyage with a cup of 
chocolate and a hard, dry cracker, and leaped ashore. 



CHAPTER VII. 

HONDA. 



Bodega and Bodeguero. — Crusoe's Long-boat.-^-Men of Burden. — Wonderful 
Bridge. — Municipal Suicide. — Salt. — A universal Swim. — A petrified City. 

So sudden was my exit from the boat that I did not even 
know on which bank we were. As Honda is on the left bank, 
I supposed we were on the same, but I found it otherwise. We 
are at La Vuelta de la Madre de Dios — the Turn of the Mother 
of God. La Vuelta is the farthest that steamers ever go, but 
they say that boats can go up to the foot of the Honda rapids if 
they have sufficient power. 

At La Vuelta there is but a mere shed or a small house. 
Were it healthy, it would be an admirable place for a farm, for 
the land ought to be fertile, and it is a convenient place to em- 
bark or disembark. There is a good road, as they call it, all 
the way from here to Bogota. With good beasts, the journey 
from here to Guaduas could be made in a day. 

Travelers now often come up, with their baggage, on mules 
from La Vuelta to Honda. It is better to engage them at once 
for Guaduas if possible, or, if not, to Pescaderias, opposite Hon- 
da, where they will stand the best chance of finding cattle, and 
where I have seen better accommodations for travelers than 
ever I found in Honda. Should you go up by water, if you 



92 NEW GEANADA. 

have much baggage, it had better be left on the east bank, and 
not taken into Honda. 

We struck off directly from the river through a variegated 
country, over an old mule-road. Soon we found high hills 
between us and the river. Monkeys were climbing over the 
trees, and various flowers covered the ground. A little grass- 
like plant here first met my eye, that I have found every where 
since. It is noticeable in having its upper leaves (bracts) white 
at the base. It is the Dichromena ciliata. 

We had walked some miles before we came to any of the 
few houses that are found on the road. Then we entered a pas- 
ture through an open gate with a roof on the top. I was sur- 
prised at this, but I learned, from further observations, that all 
gates here have roofs. Doors, gates, and bars all have the 
name of puerta. A pair of bars is puerta de trancos, and a gate 
puerta de golpa. It is often very inconvenient to the traveler 
not to know some such phrases, which, being perhaps local, are 
not to be found in dictionaries or phrase-books. These last I 
have found very deficient for Granadan use, being generally 
composed for the longitude of Madrid. 

We began to wonder, after going six or eight miles, whether 
it might not be possible that we had made some false turn, and 
were getting into the interior, when a roaring drew us a little to 
the right, and there was the river, rushing and tumbling over 
the rocks, so that we wondered how the poor champan was ever 
to get past this point, called Quita-palanca. 

We reached the foot of the rapids unexpectedly. We found 
there a small collection of cottages, a good-sized rough store- 
house, and a magnificently-planned government structure, either 
in ruins or unfinished. It bore the inscription of Bodega de 
Bogota on the arch over the door. 

The keeper of the bodega is a character. It was at a later 
period I came in contact with him. I had some baggage com- 
ing to be deposited, and, to hasten matters, I began by unsad- 
dling my own beast, and putting in my saddle and bridle before 
the peon got in. Then I called out the little thin old man from 
his breakfast. 

"What's this in here?" says he, pointing to the intruding 
articles. 



RIGID BODEGUERO. 93 

" It is only my montura," I replied. This term includes sad- 
dle, bridle, halter, and whatever else may belong to your saddle- 
horse. 

" Take it out," he cried ; "it has no business in there till it 
has been entered." 

I was greatly diverted by the zealous strictness of the only 
man I have ever found here with any system at all, and would 
gladly have spent half an hour in resisting his mandate, but 
time pressed. My peon took out the saddle, the old man count- 
ed it, and it was put back as before. At another time I greatly 
scandalized the good bodeguero by changing my linen there. 
He said all he could to induce me to change my purpose and 
not my camisa ; but necessity, though she knows no law, is a 
keen logician. I argued with him, working diligently with my 
hands the while, till we had nothing to argue for. 

Near the bodega, under a large tree, I saw the sections of an 
immense sugar-boiler. They were six or eight in number, and 
were destined for Cuni, two days' journey in the mountain. To 
carry one of them there would be a task comparable only with 
that of transporting one of Hannibal's elephants or a piece of 
Napoleon's artillery over the Alps. But all the region through 
which they have been brought is a fine sugar country, and here 
the concern has been lying for years like a stranded whale. Some 
transportation transactions that begin here are to be compared 
with the movement of a small army. One piece was so heavy 
that the cargueros (as human beasts of burden are called) are 
said to have eaten a cow a day. The heaviest load ever carried 
to Bogota by a single carguero is said to have been carried by 
a woman. It is given at 216 pounds ; but there is always an 
uncertainty about translating weights. 

The carguero, like the boga, has a more laborious calling than 
any known in the United States, and the philosophy of his at- 
tachment to it is even more difficult than that of the boga. He 
is a native of a higher, colder clime, and of a more industrious 
race. Nor is he always a poor man. Colonel Santamaria tells 
me he was once riding a sillero or saddle-man, who, from a sum- 
mit, pointed out a farm of his on which he had a tenant. They 
are of Indian blood, mixed or unmixed, and go naked from the 
waist upward, and from the middle of the thigh downward. The 



94 NEW GKANADA. 

weight is supported by two straps across the chest. I am told 
the carguero's wife meets him on the last day of his journey, 
brings him food, and takes his load. 

I met them once as I was coming down from Bogota, string- 
ing along the road for hours, with boxes of all imaginable shapes, 
and found here at the bodega the fountain from which the stream 
flowed. It was the machinery of some kind of a factory. 

After hallooing " Paso !" and " Pasero !" — ferry and ferryman 
— till we were tired, we started out a dilatory ferryman, who 
took us across to a large sandy beach. He is obliged to carry 
the neighbors gratis, and pay the province something for the 
privilege of charging a half dime and extorting a dime when he 
can from all others. This pasaje is an item of provincial rev- 
enue that ought to be centralized, as they say, for it is drawn 
from the pockets of inhabitants of other provinces rather than 
of their own. This particular ferry is the worse off, as it is on 
no traveled road, so that the Hondenos are almost the only ones 
that cross, and they cross gratis. The delays of this ferry, and, 
still more, its vexations, are a reason for going straight on to Pes- 
caderias instead of going into Honda at all. The ferry there is 
bad enough, but this is worse. You can walk from the bodega i 
to the Pescaderias, and a very pleasant walk it is, especially in 
the morning. You may find, on low bushes, some Sterculiate 
flowers and fruits, both of a peculiar structure. The flowers, an 
inch across, are red, and will remind you a little of the mallows. 
The fruit, of which you can not fail to find some old ones, are 
an inch long, and curiously twisted. It is a Helictres. 

At the beach, on the Honda side, is a row of cottages, chiefly, 
I think, of bogas, and a considerable warehouse. This is the 
bodega of Honda, or, it is better to say, of Ibague and Santa 
Ana. Here lie some old guns, that seem to have been left in 
a military movement for want of land transportation. They 
will never move again till they are sold. 

A short, steep hill, with a paved road, led up to a dry, sunny, 
uncultivated plain, extending nearly to Honda. Here I first 
met a Lantana, a genus that has followed my steps every day 
since. It was a Verbenate shrub, three or four feet high, with 
a flat disk of flowers, looking almost like Labiate flowers, but 
the fruits were small berries. The unexpanded flowers were 



HONDA. 95 

red, the young flowers orange, and the older ones yellow. The 
plain was bounded on the east by the river, roaring over a rocky 
bed, and absolutely unnavigable. President Herran, however, 
once ventured down it in a boat, on an occasion when time 
seemed of more moment to him than safety. A railroad is pur- 
posed around the rapids, through Honda, but I fear it will not 
pay, if executed. 

On the west was the range of almost perpendicular bluffs 
which surprised me so the day before with their fantastic forms. 
On the north they come down to the river. Beyond the plain, 
on the south, was Honda, and, back of it, another high hill comes 
down to the river. 

The road descends by a pavement to a very old stone bridge 
across a little dry ravine, and immediately after enters the an- 
cient city of Honda. Here once united two currents of trade, 
flowing toward Spain from the lofty cities of Bogota and Quito. 
The robbery of Indians, that once enriched these cities, is over : 
their trade with Spain is done. No trade from Quito seeks the 
Magdalena, and the scanty exports and imports of Bogota are 
beginning to creep along the base of the mountain on the oppo- 
site side of the river. No wonder, then, that ten steps in the 
old city show it to be decayed. Many a rich old house is re- 
duced to a roofless ruin, hedging in tall weeds with walls of 
thick, rough masonry. Honda is all stone and tile, so that 
never had an obsolete old place harder work to tumble down, 
and it would not have succeeded without the respectable aid 
of a few earthquakes. 

The richest specimen of earthquake-architecture I ever saw 
is the bridge over the Guali, a noisy river that runs right 
through the middle of the town. This was formerly spanned 
by two bridges made of hard stone and a mortar almost as hard. 
Of the upper one the abutments remain, and a fragment of one 
pier. The other has undergone so many cataclysms, that no 
description, ground-plans, and elevations would explain to an 
architect its present condition, and no geological investigations 
and speculations of which I am capable could lead me to satis- 
factory conclusions as to what had happened to it. It had 
broken down, been mended with wood, burned, and remended ; 
so the track of the bridge is of three different dates. Part is 



96 NEW GEANADA. 

strong enough to bear two loaded elephants abreast, and part so 
weak that all horsemen are required by law to dismount, and 
every beast to be unloaded. Part of the masonry leans up 
stream, and part down stream ; and one piece, shaped something 
like an old tin lantern, has puzzled me a dozen times to decide 
whether the axis of the cone were originally horizontal or ver- 
tical. 

But there is one more wonder about the bridge. So anxious 
are the provincial Solons to consummate the utter ruin of 
Honda, that they have imposed a peaje of a dime on each ter- 
cio of merchandise that passes the bridge, while on the other 
side is an unobstructed portage from the smooth water above 
the rapids to that below. Altogether, I should like dearly to 
pack up this victorious rival of the tower of Pisa in a box, and 
send it to New York ; but they can not spare it, for the rapid 
Guali is never fordable, and I fear it will be a long time ere an- 
other bridge will span it. 

Above the bridge you turn to your left, then to your right, 
then go up hill through narrow streets, and then down hill 
through a narrower one, to come to a wide, straight street, the 
upper end of which terminates on a smooth beach at the junc- 
tion of a small stream with the Magdalena, at the very head of 
the rapids. Above here the river is navigable for days without 
more obstruction. This upper point is the market-place, and 
the straight street is probably the newest part of the city. 

In coming up, we had the Magdalena near us all the while, 
at the left, with no street between us and the river. At first 
we had only one tier of inconsiderable houses on our right ; 
then there was a back street west, then a little plaza, then a 
church, and back of it a little hill with houses on it ; then a 
street up the north bank of the Guali, in ruins ; then a street on 
the south bank, with some good houses, some ruins, and a plaza 
in front of the barracks and cantonal offices ; then a high hill 
with a pleasant street or two running along the top, with an- 
other plaza and another church ; lastly, another branch of the 
town, mostly cottages of mud and thatch, runs up a fine piece 
of intervale along the north side of the small stream which 
bounds Honda on the south. It runs at the foot of a very high 
hill, coming down to the very bank of the Magdalena. This 



LODGING AND BOAED IN HONDA. 97 

quiet vale pleases me much, for the cottages have space around 
them that a little labor might convert into the prettiest gardens 
in the world. The heart of the town, on the other hand, just 
south of the bridge, is a dense mass of stone houses and crook- 
ed, rough-paved streets, crowded in between a hill and two riv- 
ers — a perfect petrifaction. 

To me the chief attraction of Honda is because it is the resi- 
dence of two as excellent gentlemen as ever a traveler would wish 
to meet with in a strange land. I allude to Mr. J. H. Jenney, 
of Boston, and Mr. TrefFrey, an Englishman, who has lived a long 
time in New Granada, and is married to a native of the country. 
To both these gentlemen I am indebted for almost every thing 
it was possible for me to need or for them to bestow. The 
presence of such men in a foreign land is a source of national 
pride, too often mortified by the unworthy representatives of 
the Anglo-Saxon race dispersed over the world. I had no let- 
ters to either, and, at my first visit, Mr. Jenney was from home. 
I directed my steps to Mr. Trefirey, and was welcomed with a 
cordiality that put me entirely at my ease. He took me to break- 
fast with him, hunted up Mr. Jenney's keys, and at once in- 
stalled me solitary master of the best house in Honda, as I 
should judge. 

To relieve me of the care of housekeeping, he showed me a 
place where I could take my meals. A traveler here would call 
Mr. Jenney's house my posada, and the place where I ate, my 
fonda. It would be hard to translate these words by hotel and 
eating-house, but they are the nearest approximations we have 
here. The fonda would not have been considered entirely un- 
exceptionable by Northern moralists, inasmuch as the lady 
hostess had a few illegitimate children playing about the house ; 
but travelers must get over their scruples, or manage them as 
best they may. 

I found the house spacious and exceedingly comfortable, 
though far inferior to what the society of its master and the 
hospitality of his table afterward made it. It had a date- 
palm growing in the narrow patio, or court, and reaching up 
nearly as high as the roof. All the rooms were in the sec- 
ond story, and communicated by means of a gallery — corre- 
dor — running around the court. Balconies overhung: the nar- 

G 



98 NEW GKANADA. 

row streets, and gave an opportunity of seeing what was going 
on in town. 

I went to the fonda four times a day ; early and late for choc- 
olate and sweetmeats — dulce — and at about 10 and 4 for my 
meals. These were generally beef, with yuca and plantains. 
Fish are very plenty here, for you will see, of a morning, men 
and boys with three or four huge ones, as much as they can 
carry, balanced over their shoulder on a stick, or propped up 
by another stick leaning against a wall. They labor under the 
demerit of being cheap, and our fondista would not feel that she 
is giving her guests their money's worth if she set fish before 
them. There is a smaller species, however, possessing the same 
merit as the round clam (quahog, Bostonice) has in New York 
— it is dearer. I preferred the larger kind. They are frequent- 
ly dried, and I have met them in the market of Bogota. 

In the market I saw a curious mineral for sale, which I at first 
took to be marble. It was of a dirty reddish- white color, and 
with a grain like sandstone, and was broken in pieces. I inquired 
its use, and learned that it was salt. Most of the salt is from 
Cipaquira. They take water from a salt spring, and dissolve 
impure rock salt in it till the water is saturated. It then set- 
tles and is decanted into earthen jars over a furnace. These are 
supplied with brine till they are full of a mass of conglomerated 
salt. The jars are then broken, and the mass within — moya — 
broken into pieces of a good size for loading on the backs of 
mules. No cover is used to protect this load from the rain, 
which, however, does not greatly diminish the huge compact 
masses. Nearly all salt springs and mines are national proper- 
ty, and the salt is made by contract, and sold by the govern- 
ment at prices fixed by law. This monopoly has many ene- 
mies, and the government would gladly abolish it, but their 
revenues are already too scanty. I saw, in another place, some 
moyas made in smaller jars : these I knew to be contraband, 
made secretly, without paying the excise duty. 

At night Mr. Treffrey sent four men down for my baggage. 
It made me ache to see my heavy trunks mounted on a man's 
back for a two miles' porterage. I paid two of them a dime 
each ; the other two demanded a dime and a quarter. All 
agreed that the difference was just, though they did not deny 



HONDENOS BATHING. 99 

that the weight was equal. Soon after they arrived a collector 
came in for peaje for two bales of merchandise. I had two 
"bales of paper for drying plants : it was not merchandise, and 
they let it pass. 

Honda is a forwarding town rather than mercantile. One in- 
dustry, however, is carried on here, that is fast growing in New 
Granada — cigar-making. It is but recently that the free culti- 
vation of tobacco has been permitted. Tobacco culture used to 
be limited to two places : Ambalema, a town above Honda, on 
the same side of the river, the richest town in the province of 
Maraquita, and Palmira, in the Cauca. Each cultivator took out 
a license to raise so many plants, and if he exceeded the num- 
ber a heavy fine followed. No peasant dared raise any for his 
own use. I can not see how the multiplication of cigars or the 
reduction of price can benefit the world, but the abrogation of 
this monopoly has certainly given a great impulse to industry 
in this region. The abolition was begun by Mosquera, but ac- 
complished by President Lopez, his successor. 

The next day was Sabbath, but I had not yet learned that he 
who would go to mass must go early, so I have always found 
the churches closed. It was rather a busy day, for it seemed 
as if all the population were bent on a public swim. The little 
river has its congregation when it has any water. The Magda- 
lena is much frequented just where the rapids begin, and again 
at the mouth of the Guali. The Guali itself, between the bridge 
and the Magdalena, was the resort of a few quiet ones, but the 
liveliest scenes were in the rapid current just above the bridge. 
There were full-grown men and large boys stark naked, young 
girls in the same state, and women of all ages with their bodies 
more or less covered with a blue skirt. 

The better bred of these would come down under an umbrella 
to shade them from the sun, a servant following with a skirt, a 
sheet, and a totuma. The bather would throw the sheet over 
her, and emerge from it in the skirt. Next the body is covered 
with soap, and the hair filled ; this is then converted into lath- 
er. Then follows a pouring of water from the totuma for a long- 
time without intermission. If any children are to be washed, 
now is the time to take them in hand. After this, they plunge 
into the stream, if they choose, and thus pass the time they 



100 NEW GKANADA. 

have to spend in the water. Again they envelop themselves in 
the sheet, which now serves for a towel as well as a dressing- 
room, and at length they emerge from it nearly dressed. The 
servant rinses the skirt in the river, wrings it, and puts it and 
the other wet clothes into a tray, which she carries home on her 
head. Thus the lady has secured a good swim in the open riv- 
er without any violation of decorum. But it would not be fair 
to the reader to leave him to imagine that all these details are 
the result of one day's observation. It would he difficult to find 
the hour in all the week in which some of these scenes are not 
going on. 

Back of Honda are plains of different elevations, extending to 
the west to the base of the Quindio Mountains. In these plains 
are the silver mines of Santa Ana, which I had not time to visit. 
I walked out more than a mile, and had a strong desire to go 
farther, especially as I saw before me what looked exactly like a 
great embankment for a railroad. It was the edge of a higher 
plain, but it was very difficult to undeceive myself. Here I met 
Don Diego Tanco on foot, and we walked back speaking of the 
military operations that these plains had witnessed in the revo- 
lutions of New Granada, and particularly of a battle there last 
year. He afterward sent me an invitation to dinner by a deaf 
mute ; but I had no idea that I was concerned in the paper he 
was showing round the table, and did not discover the fact till 
too late. 

I called on Sefior Tanco one evening. I found no place to 
knock, neither at the porton, at the foot of the stairs, nor yet at 
the head of them. Seiior Tanco told me the custom was to ad- 
vance till the visitor meets some one. I found a little monkey 
chained to the top of the stairs, that manifested, as usual, a live- 
ly desire to bite me. Within I found the family, partly in the 
balcony, and the rest near the windows. I was much pleased 
with my call. 

I experienced a material kindness at Sefior Tanco's hand on 
the eve of leaving Honda. I had found a young chap at the 
Bodega de Bogota who would take my cargas and myself to 
Guaduas, where he lived. The bargain was struck, but it re- 
mained to be seen whether, in all Honda, I could borrow or hire 
a saddle. I was about giving up in despair, when Sefior Tanco 



PESCADEKIAS. l(j| 

came forward to my relief with the spontaneous offer of his sad- 
dle, which I gladly accepted. 

The start was to Ibe an early one, and the men were all en- 
gaged who were to carry my baggage to the upper ferry, and 
Gregorio, the peon, had engaged the ferryman to be at his post 
at daybreak. I then bought some chocolate and bread for my 
breakfast. They have a convenient pouch or pocket to sling 
over the shoulder, called a carriel. Some have locks to them ; 
some are highly ornamented. As a substitute for this useful 
article, I now bought a little bag, here called a mochila, and 
elsewhere a guambia. 

Guambia, as I said before, often means a large sack or net, 
in which things are carried on a mule's back. Mochila often 
means a money-bag, more properly called talega, capable of 
holding five or ten pounds of cash ; while again a purse to car- 
ry in the pocket is called bolsa, and the pocket itself bolsilla. 

Early next morning came Gregorio and the cargueros, and 
soon all my effects were on the bank, where the ferryman ought 
to have been. After a tedious delay he came, smoking his ci- 
gar, and a fisherwoman, who seemed to have been long at her 
fishing, sent her little girl to beg a light of him. So we crossed 
over to Pescaderias. 

Las Pescaderias — the fisheries — was lately but a little collec- 
tion of huts. Now Don Santos Agudelo is building a ware- 
house, and a large house that will serve as a hotel. All the 
mules that travel between Honda and Guaduas are kept at 
Guaduas, and if a man would go there, he must either send up 
for mules, or take some that have brought a load down, and are 
going back empty. It is quite common to send a messenger on 
foot to Guaduas, and wait till he can find mules and a peon, and 
return with them. Now Pescaderias is the point to secure a 
passage up with the least inconvenience. Honda has the ad- 
vantage of good landings above and below the rapids, while 
those on the eastern bank are both steep and stony. Honda 
needs a good bridge across the Magdalena, and a new bridge 
across the Guali, and then it would recover its pristine import- 
ance. A bridge is already projected, but I doubt if the Magda- 
lena will ever be bridged here ; and, if not, Honda is a doomed 
city. 



102 ' NEW GRANADA. 

I had some terrible ideas of the mountain-road to Bogota, and 
of passive submission to the fantasies of my mule. This last 
thing has been wrongly represented. You should select the 
path for your mule just as you would for your horse at home ; 
but, at home or abroad, when you come to a difficulty in your 
path, you must, after ordering your animal to pass it, let him 
do so in his own way, without pulling at the bit. The doc- 
trine, as ordinarily stated, endangered my neck unnecessarily. 
The mountain mule possesses no miraculous instinct that will 
lead him to encounter a less difficulty now, to save him from a 
greater one farther ahead. 

How a baquiano would have stared at seeing me come down 
the first broad inclined plane of rock, dipping like the roof of a 
house at about thirty degrees! He would have thought me 
mad, while I was only carrying out my theory of " passive obe- 
dience" without flinching ; and I supposed, too, that there were 
plenty of worse places ahead, that would test my faith in mulish- 
ness still more severely. The rock was a spur that runs down 
to the river, over which we climbed, because going round is 
contrary to the old Spanish theory. Several more we pass, 
keep up the river some miles, and then boldly launch forth into 
the sea of mountains on the left. 

Before doing this I must breakfast. Gregorio had a com- 
panion, to whom he committed the baggage, and devoted him- 
self to aiding my breakfast. I had chosen a simple one as the 
beginning of my semi-bivouac life. It was bread and chocolate. 
We stopped at a house that had a fire burning back of it. Into 
one of my little tin pails he put a pint or more of water, and 
two balls — tablas — of chocolate, unwillingly obeying me in the 
strange proportions and large quantity, for half a tea-cup of wa- 
ter and one tabla of chocolate seemed to him all that an ordinary 
stomach could master. While this was going on, I noticed a 
colony of wasps that had taken possession of a cavity under or 
in the walls of the hut, from which it was too much trouble to 
dislodge them. 

Breakfast over, we soon began to ascend, but not rapidly. 
We came to Las Cruces, a place where a more experienced trav- 
eler would have ordered a better breakfast than I had, and lost 
two or three hours in waiting for it. He would also have run 



MEALS ON THE ROAD. 103 

great risk as to the variety of the larder, with a dead certainty 
against him as to the cuisine. To cook for one's self is a great 
annoyance, and eating at houses by the way is very uncomfort- 
able, wasteful of time, and not very cheap. Could we only af- 
ford the meat-biscuit, or reduce beef to a dry powder, it would 
settle the question in favor of the independent plan. On the 
whole, I would advise making provision for four days between 
Honda and Bogota before leaving home, providing every thing 
except sugar, chocolate, and water. 

After leaving Las Cruces there was a long spot of nearly lev- 
el road. I gave my mule into Gregorio's hands, to be more in- 
dependent. I passed under a beautiful Bignoniate vine, covered 
with- large purple blossoms, that I wished in New York. I 
came to another plant with stiff, thorny leaves, much like those 
of the century-plant. The inner leaves were red, and within is 
a dense head of flowers six inches in diameter, which give place 
to scores of fruits as large as a finger. It bears the name of 
pinuela, and is one of the best fruits of the land, being among 
the sweetest in the world, with a good supply of a very agreea- 
ble acid. The drawbacks are that each fruit must be peeled — 
and the operation covers the fingers with sirup — and that there 
is rather an abundance of seeds. These are said to have been 
the original carat weights, and the plant is the Bromelia Karatas. 
It makes a formidable hedge, and it often costs more to cut 
your way with a long machete to the centre of a vigorous plant 
than all the fruits are worth. I have seen where boys have cut 
a sort of dog-hole to creep in, six or eight feet under the leaves, 
and it seemed to me an operation worthy of Baron Trenck. 
There is another species or variety, I know not which, that is 
so acrid as to blister the lips. I have seen another species in 
the West Indies, with the flowers in a spike, instead of down 
at the roots of the leaves in a head. This is Bromelia Pin- 
guin. Next an Oxalis carried my thoughts home again. 

Now we began rising more rapidly, till the prospect became 
magnificent, and, for the first time since leaving New York, I 
found the luxury of cool water. At last the wished-for and 
dreaded moment arrived when my ascent for the day was at an 
end. I was standing on the Alto del Sargento, 4597 feet above 
the level of the sea. Honda, being 718 feet above the sea, lay 



104 NEW GKANADA. 

3879 feet beneath me, while on the other side was a continuous 
descent of 1000 feet to Guaduas. And now the ridge I was to 
descend was to shut out the Magdalena from view. My fare- 
well to my native shores cost me not a sigh ; the last glimpse 
of the masts of my vessel fading in twilight, and, weeks after- 
ward, the chimneys of the steamer disappearing at a turn of the 
river, went nearer my heart ; but now I was to sever the last 
link that bound me to all my heart holds dear. I dismounted. 
I gazed on the immense valley far beneath my feet, with the 
tawny Magdalena winding through it, so that I could have watch- 
ed the progress of a steam-boat from this point for one or two 
days without ever losing sight of her for half an hour. 

And all this wide space looked like untouched forest, just as 
it appeared to the first of the Conquerors that ever climbed to 
this point. What vegetable wealth, if not mineral also, has lain 
here undeveloped for more than 300 years ! And how much 
longer ere civilized industry will be sending precious woods 
down the Magdalena, and planting orange-groves and plantain- 
fields ? There, in the distance, is a gently-swelling hill, its sides 
and its top all buried in primeval forest. Who has ever drunk 
from the springs that must gush out of its sides ? And to what 
purpose is the mill-stream that murmurs past its base ? 

Then I turned my eyes to the future, as if I stood on the 
threshold of my fate for good or ill. Who can tell the joy and 
sorrow that shall mingle in my breast if I ever live to return 
homeward, and look down from this point again on a river flow- 
ing 600 miles straight toward home ? Shall I survive the dan- 
gers of the way — the crumbling precipices, the hidden serpents, 
and, more than all, the seductions of Saxon and un-Saxon vices 
that too often bury body and character in a common grave ? 

I have stood there again, but a dense cloud filled all the space 
to the opposite mountains, and under those clouds lay two hos- 
tile bands of men, expecting soon to engage in deadly conflict for 
the key of the Magdalena. My previous fears for a distant and 
unknown future were now exchanged for an anxiety for the day. 

Nothing is so apt to be exaggerated as danger. I met a sol- 
dier, who assured me that the firing between the two forces was 
about commencing when he left. As this weighed little with 
me, he added that to cross to Honda would be impossible, and 



ALTO DEL SARJENTO. 105 

equally so to procure a morsel of food, either at Pescaderias, or 
even by proceeding down to La Vuelta. Here was a less evil 
than being shot, but a more certain, and, therefore, a more serious 
one ; but as I determined to go on, I bought a live fowl, and 
my peon secured half a dried fish at a house which we passed. 
These we tied to the top of the baggage, and proceeded. We 
arrived at Pescaderias in time to find the defense of Honda aban- 
doned, and Melo's troops in victorious possession. Instead of 
whistling bullets exchanged between the two banks, I suffered 
no farther evil than a detention all night on the eastern bank, 
and a fast of 24 hours. 

There can be no better medicine for gloomy reflections than 
the sight that met my eyes as I turned my back on the Magda- 
lena. Instead of a boundless wilderness, there lay at my feet a 
happy valley, green with grass, cane, and maize, and dotted with 
cottages and fruit-trees, and, at the eastern edge a large town, 
with its paved streets, crowded houses, and white church front- 
ing me. Such is the valley of Guaduas, a paradise as to tem- 
perature and fertility, where heat and cold are unknown, the ther- 
mometer being always between 70° and 76°. It is said to be 
unhealthy from dampness, but on this point I am not satisfied. 
I think it must be founded in imagination. 

I stopped at one of the cottages on the way, and asked for wa- 
ter. A woman was sitting on the ground or a low stool braid- 
ing a palm-leaf hat, and her little daughter was beside her. 
They offered me dulce, which I declined. I waited there till my 
peon came up, and continued descending. It was now raining 
in the valley, and the shower at length reached us. We took 
shelter in a deserted cottage, near which I saw a beautiful Ama- 
ryllis in flower, perhaps " a garden flower run wild." Here I 
took my India-rubber encauchado, and also my gun. And now 
I found out a naughty trick of Gregorio's. He had taken a 
fancy to speculate a little in the huge dried fishes of Honda, and, 
finding my cargas rather light, he added a venture of his own. 
It was in contact with one of my blankets, which, when the fish 
became moistened with rain, became fishified, to my long dis- 
comfort. I remonstrated, and he placed some leaves of old 
thatch between the fish and my bedding. 

From here my way was steep downward, in a road often slip- 



106 NEW GEANADA. 

pery with rain, and, encumbered with my gun and encauchado, 
I continued a victim to my doctrine of passivity. At length I 
reached the plain without a fall, and soon was at the house of 
Mr. William Gooding. He kindly found room for my baggage 
in an empty house of his, and for myself at his table, thus de- 
frauding the negress Francisca of her lawful prize. Every 
stranger that arrives in Guaduas is at once referred to this en- 
terprising woman for bed, or board, or beasts to continue his 
journey. She will always promise you beasts ; and, what is 
more, she will have them, if not at the time she sets, at least 
soon after. 

I left Don Diego's montura, according to agreement, with his 
cousin, Senor Gregorio Tanco. He keeps a school here, about 
which I distrust both my recollections and impressions very 
much, so different are they from any thing I have seen since. 
First, girls went there, or at least I understood Mr. Gooding's 
little girls to say that there was where they went, and that, 
among other things, they learned coser, to sew. As cocer* 
means to cook, and coser was new to me, I came near adding 
another ridiculous impression to my blunders about this school. 
I never elsewhere in New Granada knew a man to have any 
thing to do with a female school. Second, I believe boys went 
there. Now I can not think that the two sexes were permitted 
to attend the same school. Third, it seemed to me a good school. 
My opinion now is that the daughters of Mr. Gooding went and 
studied in the sitting-room of la Seiiora de Tanco. 

In Guaduas I came also unexpectedly upon a female public 
school, but I did not go in. 

When the peon had delivered the saddle and the accompany- 
ing letter, I wished to pay him off, so I called out, "Gregorio!" 
Senor Tanco, of whom I had just taken leave, reappeared, think- 
ing I was calling him. Then I found that he was a tocuyo of 
my peon; that is, he had the same Christian name — nombre. 
Of the surname, apellido, they make little account. Tocuyo is 
often used in the vocative. Cristoval Vergara, when he calls 
Cristoval Caicedo, does not say Cristoval, but Tocuyo. 

In paying Gregorio, I had a difficulty from not understand- 
ing the meaning of suelta, or plata suelta — small money, change. 
* C has the sound of s lisped, and is often pronounced exactly like s. 



GUADUAS. 107 

He wanted suelta, for his mules had fasted three days without 
a mouthful — a fact I now do not doubt — and his home was far 
from town. I thought he wanted additional pay, and told him 
I paid him all I agreed to, and, over and above, had paid his 
ferriage and the freight on his fish. I think the price was six 
dollars — it may have been but five — for three mules and peon. 
So we parted. 

The week I spent with Mr. Gooding's family was the first 
bright spot in my peregrinations. Some of the family spoke 
English, and I never have had any Spanish lessons more pleas- 
ant than those I received from the little folk there. At his ta- 
ble I learned the word guarapo, which here signifies a fermented 
solution of sugar, resembling new cider in taste and properties. 
In the Valley of the Cauca the same word is applied to simple 
cane-juice, either fresh or boiled. Guarapo is a cheap drink for 
peons, at the rate of eight quarts for a dime, and is not despised 
by gentlemen travelers at wayside inns at double that price. 

Guaduas contains one of the two Houses of Correction — Casas 
de Keclusion — of New Granada. They have three orders of 
penitentiaries, according to the nature of crimes — Forced Labors, 
Presidio, and the House of Correction. Where the law would 
condemn a man to either of the two former, a woman or youth 
is sent to the House of Correction for a longer period, so that 
the proportion of boys and females here is large to that of men. 
Through the kindness of General Acosta, Jefe Politico pro tem., 
who alone had power to grant admission to visitors, I was con- 
ducted all over the establishment. It was an extinct Francis- 
can convent, founded in 1606. These buildings make excel- 
lent prisons without any alteration. All public buildings, with 
scarce an exception, were originally built for convents, or have 
been seized on by the monks. 

I found the inmates making cigars and cigar-boxes, and saw- 
ing out boards for these by hand. The discipline seemed ex- 
cellent. The matron appeared to be well fitted for her task. 
To one of her punishments I ventured to object, as being hard- 
est on the most sensitive or least depraved. It was shutting 
them up in the public coffin, in which corpses are taken to the 
grave, and then taken out to be buried. 

There are some criminals here whose cases would be great 



108 NEW GRANADA. 

novelties in a criminal calendar. One was pointed out to me 
who conspired with a priest. She killed a man for whom she 
was housekeeper ; and the priest testified to having married her 
to him in private before his death. She hoped to inherit his 
property, and share it with the priest. 

Another woman and her daughter were there for a series of 
horrid cruelties practiced on unfortunate persons of their own 
sex that fell into their power. It seemed to he without motive, 
something like the case of a woman in New Orleans of whom I 
have read. This mother and daughter left one of their muti- 
lated victims at the door of the hospital when they supposed she 
could never speak again. I think, too, that after their imprison- 
ment a skeleton was discovered walled up in their house. 

Guaduas was the residence of the father of the "best-known 
writer of New Granada, Colonel Joaquin Acosta, as he is known 
on his title-pages, although he was a general when he died. He 
has done much for the geography and history of his country, es- 
pecially while minister at Paris. There he collected and trans- 
lated into Spanish numerous memoirs of Boussaingault, and 
abridged and republished the only scientific periodical ever pub- 
lished in New Granada, the " Semanario." He put in the church 
at Guaduas the only town-clock that I know of that has two 
hands in all the country. Part of his valuable library has be- 
come national property. His widow, an English lady, still re- 
sides here. The immense estate of his father is divided, I am 
told, between his family and his half-brother, General Acosta. 

General Acosta is said to be a man of immense wealth. It is 
a pity that he has arrived now at the evening of life without ever 
marrying. Such a circumstance is far more common here than 
it ought to be. He is one of the most hospitable men in all the 
land. " Many persons," says Steuart, " are in the habit of par- 
taking of General Acosta's hospitalities, and then of abusing 
him afterward," an example which he accordingly imitates ; I 
can not. 

I ate at his table one of the most characteristically Granadan 
dinners I ever saw. Among other articles too numerous and 
strange for me to enumerate, was one called bollo, which I took 
to be a white, tender, insipid root. It proved to be a prepara- 
tion of maize, wrapped in the husks of the same and boiled. 



THE GUADUA. 109 

It could not have been a favorable time for a botanist when I 
was at Guaduas, being just at the close of the dry season. In 
one excursion I went out on the north side of the river that runs 
through the place, intending to cross it far above, and come 
down a road that ran along its south bank. When I had gone 
up as far as I wished, I found a place where a hut had once 
stood, and the little path by which its occupants had brought 
water from the brook. Here I was within less than two rods of 
the road ; but I had not taken my machete. After nearly an 
hour fruitlessly spent in trying to penetrate the thicket, I found 
night was coming on, and I gave myself up for foiled, and made 
an immense circuit over a horrid tract of rough grassy hills, and 
thus reached town. 

In connection with Guaduas I must notice the guadua itself, 
the most indispensable plant of all New Granada after the plan- 
tain, the cane, and maize. It might be called the lumber-tree, 
for it supplies all our fencing except walls of brick, rammed 
earth, and, rarely, of stone, and also the wood-work of most 
houses, and whatever is made of boards at the North. It 
is an enormous grass, like the bamboo of the Eastern tropics, 
growing, however, to a less height, only 30 or 40 feet. The slen- 
der foliage is of inconceivable beauty, comparing with that of 
other trees as ostrich feathers do with goose-quills. The stem 
is about 6 inches in diameter, with joints about 20 inches apart. 
The thickness of the wood is nearly an inch. 

When poles or slats are wanted, the stem is split into four, 
six, or eight parts. For boards for the top of a coarse table, 
bench, or bedstead, it is opened and flattened out, splitting 
almost at every inch of width, but not coming entirely apart. 
For a dish, candle-case, grease-pot, or extemporaneous vessel for 
carrying drink to a company of hunters or laborers, it is cut off 
just below the partitions. Such a receptacle is called a tarro. 
Tarros of double capacity are made for bringing the domestic 
supply of water for a family, by taking a piece two joints long, 
with a septum at each end and one in the middle. A hole is 
made in the upper and middle septa, and if they be used for 
carrying molasses, a bung can be put in, or an orange used for 
a stopper. Bottles of a single joint are used for holding castor 
oil, etc. In short, the uses of the guadua are innumerable. I 



HO NEW GRANADA. 

met the lumber of it as far down as Sabanilla, and saw some 
bad specimens of the tree near Cartagena. 

The guadua starts from the ground with the full diameter, 
or nearly so, but the joints are at first very short. Some trees 
send out branches, and they are long, straggling, and terribly 
thorny. Others grow with a diameter of only two inches, and 
make good poles for bringing down oranges, every one of which 
has to be torn from the tree, or it decays without falling. The 
cavities of the guadua often contain water. It is erroneously 
believed that the quantity increases and diminishes with the 
phases of the moon. Stones are said also to be found in these 
joints. This might be expected, but I never found an authen- 
tic instance, and doubt the fact. The only instance believed to 
occur under my own observation was certainly false, as the 
stone was an ordinary one. 

I must state one other thing about the guadua which is un- 
usual in the vegetable kingdom here, but very common at the 
North. It is apt to take entire possession of the ground on 
which it grows. Now a square mile covered with the same spe- 
cies, say a pine, an oak, or the beech, an acre covered with the 
same species of grass, or whortleberry, or other plant, is no un- 
common thing at the North, but in the tropics it is quite differ- 
ent. Plants are not gregarious here, still less exclusive. I 
have seen the guava grow in natural orchards where most of the 
trees in a considerable space were Psidium, but even this is rare, 
and in general you can not expect, where you have found a plant 
you want, to find others of the same species near it. If I wish to 
find a second lime-tree, for instance, it is of no more use to look 
in the neighborhood where I found the first than in any other. 
But a guadual is a considerable space, almost always near a 
stream, where scarce the smallest intruding plant is permitted. 
The guadua might be cultivated to great profit, but I never 
knew of but one attempt at it. The flower and seed are so rare 
that few botanists have ever seen it. 

One night Mr. Gooding's little daughters showed me a lumin- 
ous coleopterous insect about an inch long, called here cocuyo. 
It was a snap-bug of the size and form of the largest known at 
home as the Elater ocellata, which closely resembles it except 
in the luminous faculty. They had three of them prisoners in 



SABBATH AT GUADUAS. HI 

" houses" made by splitting a piece of cane and cutting a cavity 
in it for each one, so that the walls of their cell serve them for 
food. They shine continuously, except when at rest, with a 
light no brighter than the instantaneous flash of the best of ours. 
But their light is of two distinct and beautiful colors, red and 
a yellowish green. I do not know if this depends on sex. It 
is generally believed that you can call the cocuyo to you by 
whistling, but the experiments I witnessed in the Cauca were 
adverse to this conclusion. I think it is Elater noctiluca. 

I passed a Sabbath at Guaduas. At early dawn the plaza in 
front of the church was nearly filled with country people of all 
shades, from Indian and negro to white, with all imaginable 
productions of all altitudes. A Sunday market is a great annoy- 
ance to any decent family. It is so particularly to Mr. Haldane 
of Palmar, whose very name is suggestive of stiff Scotch Pres- 
byterianism. He applied to Archbishop Mosquera to suppress 
the Sunday market at Guaduas, but he told him that it was the 
best day for a market, as these poor peasants could not spare 
two days to come to town, and Sunday being a holiday, they 
were bound to hear mass on it. There being two priests here, 
they have two masses, and the market-people may take charge 
of each other's goods in turn during the mass. The archbishop 
laughed at the scruples of the good Scot, and applied to him the 
sobriquet of " Bishop of Guaduas." 

I attended here the first mass I heard in New Granada, hav- 
ing always before gone too late. A little daughter of Mr. 
Gooding went with me. She left her hat at home, and put on 
her shoulders a black shawl, which, on entering the church, she 
put on her head, and sat down flat on the floor. I felt a pang 
to see the amiable, intelligent child assimilated with the masses 
around her in dress and posture. The men never sit on the 
floor. If there be benches, men alone sit on them ; and, if not, 
they stand : the women never stand. There are times when all 
must kneel, or be counted impious ; at these times the bells 
peal, and the buyers and sellers in the market all uncover, at 
least. A Protestant who remains covered is liable to have 
things thrown at him, but would be protected by law. No res- 
ident Protestant has ever attempted to resist these requisitions 
of superstition, as far as I have learned. A traveler like my- 



112 NEW GRANADA. 

self, can generally escape compliance without inconvenience; 
but I hold that they have a right to insist on our uncovering in 
church, though in the rare cases that a lady wears a European 
bonnet — gorra — it is rather inconvenient. 

Before describing the mass I will premise that the church, 
like almost all the others I have seen here, besides a gorgeous 
or gaudy altar at the end, had others of inferior splendor ex- 
tending all along down the sides, looking not unlike a row of 
highly-ornamented mantle-pieces. Peculiar merit is ascribed to 
some of these side-altars. Over each was generally an image, 
sometimes a picture, covered by one or two curtains that roll 
up at the top by pulling a string. All the images are painted 
to the life, and dressed often absurdly, and the pictures often 
have jewels or finery stuck upon them, to the great injury of the 
few that are of merit. One form of the Crucifixion disgusts the 
stranger particularly. You get the impression that it was 
painted absolutely nude, and that some person, shocked at the 
indecency, has sewed on a piece of muslin. I have no doubt, 
however, that, on removing the real muslin, painted drapery 
would be found under it. 

The mass is essentially the key-stone of the ancient and 
once gorgeous fabric of Romish worship. In theory it professes 
to be the creation of the body of Christ by a power given to a 
consecrated priest. This body is declared to be divine, not hu- 
man — God, not man. Eating this body is the mass. 

The ceremony of the mass varies slightly with times and sea- 
sons, as to the color of garments worn by the priest (paramen- 
tos), in the color of the altar decorations (ornamentos), and in 
some details of the words used ; but it varies still more as to 
whether it is said or sung, low mass or high mass. Low mass 
requires only a priest, and a little boy for an assistant ; but in 
a high mass two principal assistants are necessary, at least, and 
I think others may also have a part. A fluent priest will say a 
mass in 25 minutes, but it requires sometimes two hours to 
sing one ; but the general plan and actions of both are the 
same. 

The preparations are washing the hands and dressing, with 
some prayers, in a room adjoining the church, called the sacris- 
tia — vestry. The sacristia almost always opens out of the 



THE MASS. 113 

church at the right-hand farther corner. Once only I knew one 
behind the church, so that it was under the main roof, and not 
in a lean-to, as it generally is. From the sacristia the priest 
issues, robed, and bearing the cup, which is always of gold, or is 
gilt within. On it lies a silver plate — patena — like a cover, and 
on the plate something looking like a thin square book and an 
embroidered cloth. Among other things said and read is part 
of an epistle ; this reading is on the right-hand side of the altar, 
nearest the sacristia. After this the priest crosses over to the 
other side, and, among other things, reads some in the Gospel. 
I have seen the nigh (left) side of a horse called the Gospel side. 

The book (missal) is then placed obliquely, so that the priest 
can read standing in the middle of the altar. Now he opens 
the cover on the cup. Instead of paper, it contains a folded 
cloth. He unfolds it, and finds in it a white wafer of the size 
of a notarial seal, stamped with a cross. He lays this on the 
plate. He empties out of the cup a sort of salt-spoon, and per- 
haps a miniature dust-pan, both of silver. He then wipes the 
cup carefully and covers it. He goes to the right (Epistle) side 
of the altar. The attendant takes a miniature tea-pot off a tray 
of the size of a snuffer-tray, which he holds under the priest's 
fingers and pours water on them. He then empties the water 
caught in the tray on the floor, and the priest wipes the tips of 
his fingers on a towel, which the attendant kisses. 

Then the priest proceeds to read immediately the words of 
consecration, and the wafer becomes a hostia — becomes, as they 
suppose, God. The priest kneels to adore it, and then, stand- 
ing with his back still to the people, raises it high above his 
head for all to adore. An attendant rings the altar bell, and 
all kneel. Often the bells in the belfry are also rung. If per- 
sons are in front of the church, they ought, at least, to take off 
their hats, even though they be at some distance, and occupied 
with business. After the hostia is raised, the priest in like 
manner raises the cup, into which a large glass of wine has been 
poured. At this time all noisy demonstrations possible are 
made. The organ peals its merriest notes in marches, dances, 
or waltzes. If there be cannon or platoons of soldiers in front 
of the church, they fire. A sort of rocket, called cohete, is oft- 
en let off, that rises a little way in the air, and bursts with a 

H 



114 NEW GKANADA. 

report like a pistol. The smoke of gunpowder sometimes enters 
the church, and mingles with the odors of incense. Soldiers 
on parade may stand with their caps on, and the organist keeps 
his seat. The Protestant may keep his seat or his feet, though 
greatly to the distress of the devout, who would put him down 
perforce if the law would let them. 

The priest breaks the hostia into three pieces, and, putting 
a small one into the cup, eats the other two. He scoops up 
any imaginary crumbs that fall in breaking the wafer with the 
plate if he have no scoop for the purpose, and puts them into 
the cup. He drinks the wine, rinses his fingers, first with un- 
consecrated wine and then with water, and drinks both rinsings, 
so as to be sure that not a consecrated particle has failed of its 
destination. He then wipes out the cup, returns the spoon and 
scoop, and, with a few more ceremonies, closes the performance. 

It would take too much time to describe the movements of 
the attendants in a high mass. To swing the censer, to carry 
backward and forward two ciriales, tall poles of silver with can- 
dles on top, to hold up the tip of the priest's garment when he 
kneels, pouring water, handing the towel, ringing the altar bell, 
taking part in responses, moving the missal, singing part of the 
service, etc., all in the right time, is quite a trade to learn. 

A mass may be said in the time it takes to read this account 
of it ; and the high mass (where every word is sung or drawled, 
and where the choir sing the responses which the attendant oth- 
erwise makes) is often avoided on account of its length. Sever- 
al times during the mass the priest turns toward the audience, 
or to where they would be were they present, and says Dom- 
inus vobiscum — peace be with you. The response is, Et cum 
spiritu tuo — and with your spirit. During the confession in 
the earlier part of the mass, the audience give three light blows on 
their breast. If the attendance be large, a strange, hollow, and 
impressive sound fills the church. At the close the priest says, 
Ite, missa est — go, it is sent, or dismissed (sc. concio, the meet- 
ing). Hence the word mass ; in Latin, missa ; Spanish, misa. 

I visited the cemetery at Guaduas. It is a substantial in- 
closure, with a chapel in the middle. Most of the bodies are 
buried in the ground, but the bodies of the richer class are 
placed in the oven-like bovedas. In one case a husband was 



WATER-GIRLS. 115 

immured in one, leaving another beneath him yawning for his 
widow. Here I saw the boveda of the lamented Acosta, the 
mouth closed with a beautiful, soft rose-colored stone, which, if 
it would endure our climate, would be admired for monuments. 

Coffins are little used in Guaduas. In the chapel I saw two 
coffin-shaped boxes painted black, with a skull and cross-bones 
in white on every side, just similar to that which I saw at the 
prison. Here, too, I saw, thrown about the grounds, fragments 
of little extemporaneous biers for very small children, and in 
one spot a little pillow and some coarse rags, that touched my 
heart with a feeling of compassion. The cemetery is a good 
one for this country, and was probably originated by Colonel 
Joaquin Acosta. 

Another feature of Guaduas remains to be noticed. It is the 
fountain in the Plaza. It is a structure resembling a monument, 
and is surrounded with a wall about three feet high. In the 
front and ends of the monument are the mouths of iron tubes, 
from which issue streams of clear water, brought from the neigh- 
boring hill in an open, drain-like aqueduct, called an acequia. 
The fountain itself is called a pila ; the same word is applied to 
a baptismal font. 

The water-girls come here with a large earthen jar — mucura 
— slung so as to rest on their hips, and a long tube in their hand. 
The mucura is placed on the low wall, one end of the long reed 
— often terminating in a cow's horn — applied to the mouth of 
one of the iron tubes, and thus the stream conducted to the mti- 
cura. When a mucura is nearly full, a struggle often occurs be- 
tween two expectants, each desirous to fit her horn to the spout 
as soon as the other leaves it. 

On reaching the house the mucura is emptied into the tinaja, 
which is a much larger jar with a wide mouth. Each house has 
a sort of arch of burned bricks, built generally in the corridor, 
with holes to receive two or three tinajas. This is called a ti- 
najera. The tinajera might sustain the same relation to the 
family circle here, if any thing does, that the sacred hearth does 
at the North. " Pro aris et focis," then, must be translated, in 
New Granada, "For the little saints' cupboards and the tina- 
jeras." 

I assume Guaduas to be almost exactly 1000 metres in alti- 



116 NEW GKANADA. 

tu.de, or 3281 feet, with a mean temperature of 74°. The ther- 
mometer has very little range, and, if it he not too damp, there 
can not he on the face of the earth a more delightful climate. 
There is, however, some goitre here ; but I believe that a little 
iodine water, taken daily, would prevent it or cure it. I thought 
I saw a case of cretinism, but it may have been ordinary idiocy. 
Goitre is called coto, and a person whose throat is thus orna- 
mented is a cotudo. 

But I must leave Guaduas. It is a curious illustration of 
the influence of the customs of a country on our own habits, 
that I took leave of my little friends, who had gained a large 
place in my heart by their amiable, affectionate, winning ways, 
by a salutation little known here — a kiss. After considerably 
more than a year's experience of Granadan life and ways, I met 
them again, to my great delight, with an equally earnest greet- 
ing — an embrace. I can not say that kissing is used at all here, 
but embracing is in almost universal use in case of long separa- 
tions, with inferiors, superiors, and equals, with persons of the 
same sex or different. Some illustrations of this will occur far- 
ther on. 



CHAPTER YIII. 

PLAIN OF BOGOTA. 



The Negress Francisca. — Ups and Downs. — Venta at Cuni, and Sausage there. 
— Villeta. — Great Tertulia and hard Lodgings. — Excelsior. — The Plain. — 
Traditions. — Fences. — The Orejon. — Battle-fields. — Market-people. — Fonti- 
bon. — Entrance to Bogota. 

Oue party from Guaduas consisted of the two musicians, who 
had also been waiting in Guaduas in order not to change too 
suddenly their temperature and altitude, and two persons who 
had arrived in a subsequent boat the night before. These were 
a Bogotano, a printer by the name of Martinez, and a boy from 
Caraccas named Paez, traveling under the protection of Martinez. 
Altogether we had 11 beasts, furnished by the enterprising ne- 
gress Francisca — la negra Francisca, as they always call her. 
She meant to count us off into three parties, each with less than 



LEAVING GUADUAS. 117 

five beasts, and, consequently, each obliged to pay for a peon as 
an extra beast. She would send with us three peons, and we 
would pay for 14 beasts. We resisted. I sent back the peon 
that was putting my trunks in their encerados, saying that I 
should engage another set of mules and peon, and travel by my- 
self. She gave in, and sent two peons, and received pay for but 
11 beasts. She had great difficulty in counting the money. I 
had to pay extra for my saddle, which was, at last, a bad one. I 
have lost the minute I made of the prices ; but I once paid $12 80 
for three beasts and peon (four) from Bogota to Guaduas, and 
$6 40 from Guaduas to the bodega below Honda. These were 
high prices. 

We started at 9, having already breakfasted. So early a start 
is a rare proof of the activity of the negress Francisca, but I did 
not then appreciate it as I now should, after more experience in 
Granadan early breakfasts. We soon found our mules' backs 
making an angle of from 20° to 40° with the horizon while they 
climbed the paved zigzags — quingos — which at length took us 
to where we could see the valley beneath us like a map. 

At this rate we might reach the altitude of Bogota before 
night, but here came a change. We were at the beginning of 
an enormous descent, and we could plainly see that if the road 
had kept farther to the north, it might have wound round this 
great hill, and saved all the descent and most of the ascent. We 
were now at the Alto del Raizal. Once at the bottom, we re- 
commenced the ascent, and to a still higher point. This was 
the Alto del Trigo. Trigo means wheat, and it is quite possi- 
ble that wheat will grow here, for it is at an altitude of 6139 
feet, according to Mosquera, my best authority on this road. 
We have risen, then, 2839 feet. Lewy calls it 4148 feet, a lit- 
tle less than a mile, which is probably a clerical error of 2000 
feet. Mosquera makes a similar one of 3000 feet in the altitude 
of Guaduas. 

Before I was aware, I had passed the hacienda — estates — of 
Palmar, the property of Mr. Haldane, the " Bishop of Gua- 
duas." I was sorry not to have seen this excellent man, who, 
it is said, has suffered much for his want of the peculiar tact 
necessary in managing peons. It is supposed that his first dif- 
ficulty originated from ejecting a tenant for living with a worn- 



118 NEW GEANADA. 

an he was not married to. The ceremony had been dispensed 
with to save the fee, $5 60. One attempt seems to have been 
made to assassinate the family, but the fearless Scot was an 
overmatch for his numerous assailants. A new cane-mill was 
burned to the ground the day before he was to commence opera- 
tions on a large field of cane just ripe : he lost his crop. Again 
he engaged in the culture of coffee, and the last I heard was, he 
was losing his entire crop for want of a will to gather it. 

All around us was a confused crowd of hills, separated by 
deep, narrow valleys. Every where on the sides are cottages 
and fields, but no roads visible. Many of the fields were cane- 
patches — caiiaverales. Cana vera would mean true ca?ie, that 
is, sugar-cane. There must once have been a cane-field at Cape 
Canaveral, on the coast of Florida, or Florida, as the name used 
to be before Andrew Jackson reformed the pronunciation. The 
cane is the most odious-looking crop that ever covered the 
ground. The scanty leaves on its rigid stalks are of a sickly 
yellowish green, and before the beautiful tassels can come out 
to wave in the breeze, the stalk is cut for sugar or horse-feed. 
Nor does the Canaveral improve on a closer acquaintance, as it 
is difficult to pass through it without endangering the face and 
eyes with the harsh, stiff foliage. 

At the Alto del Trigo I gave my horse into the charge of 
Nepomuceno, the little peon of little Paez, and walked down the 
long hill^to Cuni. Every step down hill is two steps lost. In 
descending I saw a tall brick chimney, that at once suggested 
thoughts of the North. It proved to be an establishment of 
Mr. Wills, an Englishman, who has bought the monopoly of 
supplying the province of Bogota with spirits. He makes it of 
cane-juice, which he extracts by water-power. Mr. Wills has 
long lived here, speaks and writes the language well, is deeply 
interested in the financial prosperity of the country, and was 
once appointed fiscal agent to London. He did not go, how- 
ever, as the creditors there expressed a preference that his sal- 
ary should be added to their scanty dividends. The huge ket- 
tle at the Bodega de Honda was for this establishment. 

Three women fearlessly waded across the brook at Cuni 
while I was about picking my way across on some stones. They 
entered the first house ; I followed them, and saw there the 



VEtfTA AT CUNI. 119 

most perfect specimen of a venta that I have ever seen. Ton- 
would have called the room I entered, the tienda, a miniature 
grocery, but it was less and more. How they live on their 
slender sales I can not guess ; but in this instance they had 
managed to get up almost a casa claustrada, a perfect house. 
Most ventas consist of but a single room except the tienda, with 
perhaps a little cooking-house in the rear. At Cuni there is a 
small place where you may ride into the patio, and there is food 
that could be sold for horses, but gentlemen rarely buy, even 
when stopping over night. 

As I was determined to wait here till the company overtook 
me, I set myself to watch the women. They called for a cuar- 
tillo of ajiaco. A cuartillo is not a measure : no measures of 
capacity are ever used in New Granada, and very rarely any 
other weight than the carga of from 200 to 250 of our pounds — 
a mule-load. A cuartillo is a fourth of a dime, and is the small- 
est of our silver coin. Some other passers at this time showed 
me the only copper Granadan coin I have ever seen. Practi- 
cally the cuartillo is subdivided into cuartos, but you must lay 
out your whole cuartillo at the same tienda. Most loaves of 
bread and tablas of cheap chocolate are made to sell at a cuarto. 
A half cuartillo is a mitad, a medio is a coin worth half a dime, 
and a real is exactly a dime. It is legally divided into ten cen- 
timos, but they are never used. 

I may as well say what remains to be said on coins now. 
The legal meaning of the word peso is ten dimes, but the word 
is always used for eight dimes. The traveler must never doubt 
on that point, but he is very apt to on being told once only. If, 
after a verbal agreement, legal pesos often dimes are demanded, 
resist the demand ; it is an attempt to cheat that they never 
would try on an experienced traveler. Dollars are always de- 
nominated pesos fuertes, duros, or fuertes, except at auctions 
and in law documents. A patacon is a coin of eight reals, or a 
transverse section of green plantain fried hard. An onza is a 
gold coin sold at about sixteen dollars. They have a piece a 
little heavier than our double eagle, called a condor. 

Well, numismatics have kept us till the poor women's ajiaco 
is hot, and brought in and set in a wooden ring nailed to the 
counter to hold the round-bottomed totuma steady. It is a 



120 NEW GEANADA. 

broth or stew, containing pieces of potato or plantain, and per- 
haps, if the seller be generous, a mouthful or two of meat. If 
you had any confidence in the cook, the composition would not 
be bad to take. There was a single spoon, of totuma or wood, 
in the dish, with which each one took a mouthful in her turn, 
till, too soon, alas ! the totuma was empty. There had been 
in it only a moderate allowance for one, and perhaps it was a 
case where the richer of the three was dividing her little all with 
her neighbors. 

A still more amusing meal might have been witnessed some 
ten years since on this spot. A New York hatter, just speak- 
ing a few words of Spanish, who has been tormented and half- 
starved by the abominated Granadan cookery, and especially 
persecuted with cumin-seed, has his eyes gladdened by seeing 
suspended in this same tienda some veritable sausages, relleno 
(Bologna sausage is salchicha). An idea has struck him. He 
has seen sausages cooked; nay, he is sure he can cook them. 
He will have one feast, cost what trouble it may. He purchases 
quant, stiff., paying in inverse ratio to the Spanish he can speak. 
This is the easiest part of the task. With greater difficulty he 
secures an olla — home-made earthen cooking vessel — an olla of 
any form in which frying would be possible. He is conducted 
by the astonished natives to a spot yet to be described, a Gran- 
adan kitchen. By broken Spanish and gesticulation he super- 
intends operations they have never seen before. With the vig- 
ilance worthy of a man whose life has been attempted a dozen 
times with cumin-seed, he watches against the introduction 
of all heterodox ingredients, and of that in particular. A visi- 
ble success crowns his efforts. Eagerly he sits down to a large 
table, made of boards, with a full dish before him of sausages 
cooked as well as any that ever came from his mother's kitchen. 
The first morsel is now between his teeth, and he discovers — 
oh, horrors ! — that things can be put inside of a sausage ! 

Steuart describes his emotions as follows : " Then I had it 
dished, while my delighted orbs of vision followed the direction 
of the knife, which immediately divided in twain the much-prized 
morsel ; but oh ! horror of horrors ! my delicious anticipations 
all vanished with one fell stroke, for it revealed to me the fact 
that this, too, had been plentifully besprinkled- with the always 
used and never-failing cumin-seed!" 



LAYING OUT EOADS. 121 

For myself, I must admit that I had reached Cuni without 
tasting any thing more abominable than their sausage. It was 
the only thing that I found myself absolutely incapable of eating. 
My difficulty was with the garlic ; Steuart's failure was attrib- 
uted by the natives to his not knowing the proper way to cook 
them. 

At this same venta I too have dined with the loss of less than 
an hour in waiting, and with a bill of 6 dimes for two. It would 
prove one of the best places to pass the night on the road, but 
it is scarcely possible to avoid changing beasts at Guaduas, and 
passing a night there, so that, in a well-regulated journey, you 
must be here nearer midday. But an ascent toward Guaduas 
from this point between 2 and 4 P.M. was one of the warmest 
pieces of traveling I have ever done in the tropics. 

At length our party arrived, and I mounted and proceeded. 
Soon I saw a piece of made road. It looked like the grading 
for a railroad, only it had a sharp elbow in it. Nobody travel- 
ed it, for it was much easier to go across it than follow it. None 
but a North American can give New Granada carriage-roads, for 
in the United States alone are extensive portions of new and 
cheap roads located every year. Some persons, like "Blind 
Jack" of Derbyshire, England, have a genius for locating roads, 
and such a genius is much needed here. The Granadino runs 
his road straight up the hill and down on the other side. The 
European, who rarely has a new road to make, and knows no 
want of money, digs straight through ; the Yankee goes round, 
and the Granadino should learn of him. 

Again we commenced ascending. On the Alto de Petaquero 
I found a neglected orange-tree, and as I liked the idea of or- 
anges to be had for the gathering, I rode under, and with some 
trouble filled my pockets. To my surprise, I found them ap- 
parently of another species, with an exceedingly thick rind, and 
of a pulp so sour as to be entirely uneatable. They are good 
only when cooked with sugar, or the juice may be mixed with 
water and sweetened. This is the Naranja agria, Citrus vulgaris, 
often called the Seville orange. 

Another steep descent brought us to Villeta, the only real 
town between Guaduas and the plain of Bogota. Mosquera puts 
it at the altitude of 2635 feet, with a mean temperature of 77°. 



122 NEW GRANADA. 

So it is considerably lower than Guaduas, and we have lost all 
the climbing we have done to-day. 

I find, in two measured descents that we make in ascending 
from Honda to Villeta, a loss of 4792 feet, lacking only 488 feet 
of a mile perpendicular. Add to this the descent from the Alto 
del Eaizal, and that from the Alto de Petaquero, and we have a 
sheer loss of much more than a mile climbing up, and the same 
quantity of climbing down. We have no idea of such a waste 
of force combined in one useless ascent and descent. Let the 
principal highway of a nation be led by zigzags from the base 
of Mount Washington up to the summit, and down on the other 
side, and it would be much less than the useless descent in a 
journey of a day and a half, given in the mail-routes as 11 hours, 
say 31 miles ! It is to keep this precious specimen of a national 
road in the power of the greatest city of New Granada that the 
province of Bogota is made to extend down to Pescaderias, em- 
bracing a people that are as far removed from the Bogotanos in 
customs and interests as in climate. 

Villeta stands on the banks of the Rio Negro, which empties 
into the Magdalena near Buenavista. The future carriage-road 
to the river may run through this place, but not through Guad- 
uas. That, however, is in a broader, greener, and much more 
beautiful valley than this, and has the advantage of being cool- 
er, so that, though farther from Bogota, it is much more visited. 
Villeta yields much more sirup and sugar. But I must ex- 
plain these terms. The sirup is thin and watery, and bears the 
name of mid. Molasses drained from sugar is miel de purga. 
Thick sirup is amibar; all three are melado. Honey' (which 
is not here a table article) must be specified as of bees to be un- 
derstood — miel de abejas. All the sugar made in Villeta is of 
the cheap form, which is called jpanela. It is sirup sufficiently 
concentrated to "grain," or form fine crystals without giving 
rise to molasses. It is cast in the form of bricks. It is often 
one third the price of coarse brown loaf-sugar, which alone bears 
the name of azucar, and sometimes is a dime and a half per 
pound. Faint approximations to white sugar are common, but 
any that would bear the name of loaf-sugar with us is very rare. 

All this while we were waiting dinner at the best posada or 
venta in the place. I sallied forth over the rough-paved streets, 



VILLETA. 123 

and came to the Plaza and the church, with its rude-painted im- 
ages, and coarse, flat-looking pictures. The aspect of the church 
was like that of Guaduas, hut poorer. The only thing of inter- 
est that I saw was an Orchid flower lying at the feet of a saint. 
It was the second flower of that Order that I had seen in the 
country, hut I did not venture to take it. Returning from church 
I came upon the school. It was taught by an intelligent lad of 
seventeen, dressed in neat but dilapidated clothes. The room 
was furnished after the Lancasterian plan, but the teacher seem- 
ed to have no idea of any thing farther than the mechanical pro- 
cesses of reading, writing, and praying. I have seen many such 
schools since : few are much better, none much worse. 

I returned to dinner, but it was not ready. Time enough had 
passed to have slaughtered a bullock, and cooked a dinner from 
it and eaten it. I suspected that they designed detaining us all 
night, but when our baggage had passed on they gave up and 
brought in dinner. It was no great affair after all, but we fin- 
ished it so as to mount about 5 o'clock. 

We followed up the Rio Negro, crossed Guama bridge, pass- 
ed Guayabal and Mauve. About here I learned a new fact in' 
Natural History. It appears that some of our beasts can not 
drink with the bit in their mouth — a most vexatious circum- 
stance, that has many a time since brought me to my feet at a 
most inconvenient spot, on the muddy bank of a stream. One 
thing I am sure of: any horse that I should ride much would 
acquire this useful accomplishment in one day were I sure of 
plenty of drinking-places ; but where you hire a beast for two 
days it is for your interest to humor him. 

It was now dark, and we would gladly have found our bag- 
bage halted, but they had passed on with a diligence as yet in- 
explicable. We now entered on the Salitre, a patch of road that 
is sometimes so bad as to cost half a day to pass what we un- 
consciously crossed after dark. At last we arrived at a venta 
filled with a noisy crowd, and there we found all our trunks 
piled up under the eaves in a heap. It consisted of a single 
room besides the tienda. Within, one or two tallow candles, in a 
rude wooden chandelier, shed a dim light upon a dense mass of 
men and women. I made my way through it to where two or 
three were sitting at a table playing a sort of cards unknown to 



124 NEW GKANADA. 

Hoyle in number, name, or form. Cups, cudgels, golds, and 
swords — espadas — were the four suits, and I believe the num- 
ber of cards was 40. 

But there was music too, vocal and instrumental, and, I be- 
lieve, dancing. The principal musical instrument was the tiple, 
a diminutive of the bandola, which is itself a reduction of the 
common guitar. The length of this implement of torment is a 
little more than a foot, and I do not think the strings are ever 
shortened by stopping them, as in the guitar and violin. This 
banjo, jun., is easily played, when once in tune, by drawing your 
fingers across it in any manner, only keeping time. It costs 
only two or three dimes, and the number that infest the land, not 
only in the tiendas, but by the roadside, is dreadful. The tiple 
was accompanied by an alfandoque, a small joint of guadua, with 
numerous pegs across the cavity within. It contains some peb- 
bles or grains of maize. In a word, it is the most stupendous 
rattle-box ever clutched by grown-up baby. The word alfando- 
que also applies to a composition of sugar, full of cavities, so 
that it crumbles in the mouth like the candy they call kisses ; 
but alfandoque is in the size of biscuits. 

The eagerness of our peons to press on was now explained. 
The traveler must guard against passing near night a place 
where there is a holiday or merry-making, if his baggage is in 
the rear. Some unforeseen accident will inevitably happen to 
beast or peon, and you will sleep without your baggage. 

I was glad to retreat from the crowd, and, as I was doing so, 
I trod on something soft. Thinking it a dog or cat, I took off 
my foot immediately, but there came not up that instantaneous 
cry of brute anguish that I expected, but in its stead, an in- 
stant after, the wail of a naked babe, that its ostrich mother had 
left to creep beneath the feet of the unshod crowd, and now was 
under the heel of my heavy riding-boot ! 

I felt sick, and when we met in council I found we were all 
desperate. I alone had a hammock. Our baggage was so mix- 
ed, and the peons were so busy, that we had hard work to get 
our night fixings. The Hollanders declared that they would 
not sleep there. They took their bayetones and went to anoth- 
er house, and came back again. There was a trough of molas- 
ses in the back porch, with a cover on it. This made a bed for 



FKOLIC AT A POSADA. 125 

the little Venezolano. Martinez spread his duds (trastos) on 
the ground, with a mat set up on edge to keep the cold mount- 
ain wind off his head. Over him I hung in my hammock, and 
when I became accustomed to the noise, I slept like a prince. 

I awoke in the morning, and found the Hollanders sleeping 
at last, packed in together like two pigs, on the rough stones in 
front of the house, one bayeton serving them for mattress, like 
a feather on a rock, while the other served as blanket. They 
did not complain so much of their bed as of that infernal sere- 
nade. The performers were partly dispersed abroad, and part- 
ly spread over the floor, sleeping in various attitudes. 

Without waiting for even a cup of chocolate, we took leave 
of the venta with a polyglot of valedictories that would not be 
worth the trouble and erudition necessary to record them. Not 
far from here I passed a Cinchona bush in flower ; it was a use- 
less species. 

We breakfasted, after passing Chimbi, at Escobal or Agua- 
larga. The meal was of fried beef and fried eggs, with fried 
plantains. Soon after setting out again a fine rain came upon 
us. I put on my encauchado, and lent my umbrella. Soon we 
came to dry ground, where no rain had fallen, and then again 
we were in the rain. When it stopped, I found myself in Aser- 
radero, a spot that strongly reminded me of home. There was 
a house more Yankee-looking than usual, some grass fenced in, 
and even the plants seemed to present a different aspect. One 
little flower that there attracted my attention would have inter- 
ested me more had I then known its significance. It occurs in 
all places above a particular height, and marks the boundary of 
the tierra fria, the cold region, as we ascend. It is a flower just 
like a dandelion, but it is stemless ; and if you would find the 
connection between the flower and leaf, you must dig for it. It 
is the achicoria of the natives, Aschyrophorus sessiliflorus. It 
extends down to a height of about 7900 feet above the level of 
the sea — a very respectable altitude. 

Long before reaching here we could have seen the outer rim 
of the great plain of Bogota rising before us like the walls of a 
fortress, and we seemed to be approaching a very difficult place 
to surmount them. If there is a good place, I have never heard 
of it. Such a discovery will be necessary to a railroad, unless 



126 NEW GKANADA. 

the engineer can teach locomotives to climb like ants or jump 
like crickets. Even an inclined plane would be more difficult to 
make than a hoistway. Our zigzag road was now as steep as 
stairs, and turned continually. But never did I expect to see 
such a vegetation. As I ascended, it seemed almost to shift 
past me. Among the flowers were species of the green-house 
genera, Begonia and Fuchsia. A bush without flowers, but with 
large leaves and very large clusters of little berries or nuts, 
particularly puzzled me. It was the strangest reduction of a 
poppy, Bocconia frutescens. 

At length the ascent remitted its severity, and then ceased 
entirely at El Eoble. We found here a venta, at which we 
stopped a while. Even then I could not believe that we were at 
the altitude of Bogota, but we were and more. It was now not 
much past noon, but since dark last night we had ascended more 
than a mile perpendicular ! We are here at an altitude of 8858 
feet, according to Humboldt, or more than 300 feet higher than 
the summit of Mount Washington. Then we came down a 
gentle slope without rock, and at last the vast plain burst upon 
our eyes. It is the strangest spectacle to the traveler ; it seems 
incredible that, after such an ascent, level ground can be reach- 
ed without hours of descent. Before us the plain stretched thir- 
ty miles to the eastward, and having an extent of about sixty 
miles from Suesca on the north to Cibate on the south. It 
has been calculated to contain 1378.3312172 square miles, or 
220,533 acres and a few square inches over. 

All this vast plain has been leveled by water ; few doubt but 
that it was once a lake. If not, it has been a hollow of un- 
known depth, now filled with alluvium. So strongly marked is 
the dividing line between the hills, that form the rim of the ba- 
sin, and the plain within, that the idea of a lake rises involun- 
tarily to the mind of the unreflecting, and he calls the knolls ris- 
ing out of the plain near its edges islands, and the hills them- 
selves shores. 

The Indians had a tradition that Chia, Yubecayguaya, or 
Huitaca, a beautiful but malicious divinity, flooded it, driving 
the inhabitants to the mountains for their lives. Bochica, her 
husband, called also Zuhe and Nemqueteba, transformed her into 
the moon, struck the barrier ridge with his staff, made the Falls 



THE GEEAT PLAIN. 127 

of Tequendama, drained the plains, and then retired to Sogomo- 
so, where he reigned for 2000 years. 

What was the height of the water of the supposed lake? 
Tradition, of course, will say that its waters were drained off. 
But of this I found no evidence at all, although in other lake 
plains north of here I can not doubt the fact. But if a lake was 
ever drained off the surface of the whole plain of Bogota, it must 
have been very shallow indeed in proportion to its extent. 

To the Bogotanos this plain is the joy of the whole earth, and 
the fact that nothing will grow here but wheat, barley, grass, and 
a few roots, weighs nothing with them. So chill is its climate 
that frost may visit it in any season of the year. A sufficient 
succession of cloudy days and clear nights might at any month 
congeal its whole surface. Now it stretched away before us al- 
most a dead level, with patches of water toward the centre, but 
elsewhere so parched with drought that it seems an Illinois prai- 
rie in October, and the temperature corresponded. It never as- 
sumes all the verdure of an extra-tropical spring just escaped 
from the prison of winter, but by reason of the transparency of 
the air, the strong setting of the picture in a framework of mount- 
ain, and the indescribable roughness of the country just passed 
over, the impression made by this plain can neither be effaced 
nor described. 

We began to trot, and I found my breath failing me. I was 
obliged to beg the company to slacken their pace, for I could 
not gather strength to pull my reins, and was very near falling. 

We had passed our posada without seeing it, and had to re- 
turn. It was a very unpromising affair as to the exterior, with 
not a window to the street, but on riding through the huge por- 
tal we found ourselves in a casa claustrada, with an enormous 
patio. All the doors of the establishment opened into it, even 
that of the tienda, which, in every other venta, opens into the 
street. A small yard, six feet square in the centre, protected 
some shrubs. 

Some macaws — guacamayas, Ara glauca — and a monkey blind 
of one eye, helped to people the patio. But what most interest- 
ed me was a bird a little less than a turkey, called a pauji. It 
was remarkable for a sort of ventriloquial voice, at first appear- 
ing to come from a great distance, and then appearing rather to 



128 NEW GRANADA. 

resemble the humming that a stick makes when rapidly whirled 
in the air. It was probably Ourax alector. 

Our posada, which bears the name of El Botello (not the bot- 
tle — la botella), was in reality better than ordinary, and, were it 
provided with stables and horsefeed, would be almost a country 
inn. One thing it could not give me — a place to hang my ham- 
mock in-doors, and it was too cold in the corredor. They tried 
to make up a bed to satisfy me, but I found it very hard. We 
had a very tolerable dinner and breakfast, and, on the whole, I 
was much pleased with the place. 

On arising in the morning I was surprised to find the whole 
patio filled with carga mules, which gave me an exalted opinion 
of the popularity of El Botello. Just at this moment an ex- 
planation comes to my mind after I had long forgotten the fact. 
Wednesday is market-day at the town of Facatativa, and this 
assemblage of beasts, laden chiefly with skins of miel, could oc- 
cur on one morning only in the week. They must have been 
nearly a hundred in number. 

I committed a great error in starting from here across the 
plain without greasing my face, and particularly my lips. 
Grease is a good preservative against the effects of sun and 
wind. The wind here is often very dry, and you may pay 
dearly for kissing it. I have had my lips bleed for weeks after 
passing it, even with the wind at my back all the way. Many 
protect themselves by cloth, as if against cold, but it seems to 
me less convenient, and even less agreeable, to be so bun- 
dled up. 

We started late from El Botello, and in bad order. First, 
they had our baggage so thoroughly mixed that, to get at my 
two cargas on arriving at Bogota, it was necessary to unload 
four beasts. All my exhortations at El Botello to put my 
property by itself were unavailing. Second, part of the mules 
were suffered to start before all were loaded. This was prob- 
ably designedly done, to give the peons a chance to chat with 
the market-girls at Facatativa ; and at last it happened that we 
found part of our cargas entirely without a peon, and were 
obliged to drive them through Facatativa ourselves, or risk 
losing them. One dodged between two houses into a field, and 
I had a hard ride to drive him out, as my poor mule preferred 



FACATATIVA. 129 

rather to share the spoil with him than to make haste, and I 
wore no spurs. 

Then, again, when clear of the town, we resolved to halt and 
wait a reunion of all our forces ; but here occurred a difficulty : 
not one of the party knew the word to use to command the 
mules to stop ; not the Venezuelano, nor even the Bogotano. 
The word used here is o-o-is-te ; in other places, sh ; in others, 
chit-to-o. We adopted a better expedient : we bought a half 
dime of maize on the stalk (it can scarcely ripen here), and 
threw it to the famishing animals, and they waited contentedly 
till the peons arrived with the remainder. 

Facatativa is a large, poorly-built town, with a population 
chiefly of Indian blood. Its main support must be derived from 
the herdsmen of the great plain ; perhaps as a place for an in- 
termediate sale of miel and other articles, that are brought here 
from the tierra caliente on mules, and which can be carried on 
carts to Bogota. A rude cart rumbling past El Botello quite 
excited me. The road here is even too good, for the cost spent 
on it would have done much toward making a wheel-road to 
the Magdalena. Carriages come out here to bring or meet trav- 
elers, who are made to pay roundly for it. The distance is 
stated as low as seven leagues ; the post-office calls it nine. I 
reckon it as twenty-eight miles. 

As we proceeded we noticed a saw-mill on the left, not far 
from Facatativa, and where trees and water-power would seem 
nearly equally scarce;, I know of but one other in all the coun- 
try. It is at Tequendama, and, like this, is accessible to Bo- 
gota by wheels. In fact, carriages and carriage-roads seem a 
necessary prerequisite to saw-mills, and it is not strange that 
there should be none off this plain. And how many interests 
of domestic economy depend on the existence of saw-mills ! 

Near the mill I saw a fence made of the trunks of tree-ferns 
set up on end. I recognized them without difficulty, although 
I had not yet seen them growing. A botanist would fancy a 
fence of so strange a material ; here it was merely economy, as 
the shell of the trunk seems quite durable. They call tree-ferns 
here palo-bobo, fool-wood. 

Soon I caught at a passion-flower that was not a passion-flow- 
er, for it had assumed a form so distorted as to take the name 

I 



130 NEW GKANADA. 

of Tacksonia. This new Passiflorate genus has numerous spe- 
cies here, several of which yield a fruit known at Bogota as cu- 
ruba. Some of them are very fine when well sweetened. The 
seed is swallowed with the aril, which is the only edible part. 
The curuba of the Cauca is a real Passiflora, which, if not a 
variety of the P. quadrangularis, known in our green-houses, 
and here called the badea, is certainly close to it. Both are 
huge fruits, as large as a small watermelon ; but of the badea 
you eat the walls of the fruit itself as well as the arils, while of 
this curuba, as of that of Bogota, only the aril serves. The ut- 
ter neglect of cultivation of fruits gives rise to all my doubts as 
to these being varieties, and what adds to my difficulty is that 
I never have been able to obtain a ripe badea. 

Another Passiflora, probably P. ligularis, yields the grana- 
dilla, one of the very best fruits unknown to the New York mar- 
kets. The walls of the fruit are thin, and, when broken open, 
are clear and dry ; and the mechanical process of taking out the 
rich, juicy, sweet arils with a fork or spoon is in itself a very 
agreeable one. The granadilla, and all the Tacksonias, are 
plants of high lands, and only the badea and the Caucan curuba 
grow in Tierra Caliente. All are vines that will flower in our 
green-houses, but all cast their fruit there. Query : Would not 
P. quadrangularis perfect its fruit if kept at a temperature be- 
low 70° ? 

A few words more will finish all I have to say of the Passi- 
florate plants of this country. Several have very small fruits 
and flowers. One, with a large, pretty flower, has a tolerable 
fruit, with a very hard shell. Another, with a viscid calyx, has 
a fruit so thin that it is called paper granadillo — granadillo de 
papel. I found one Passiflora that was an erect bush, and anoth- 
er still was a tree ! it was so high that I had to stand on my 
horse's back to reach the lowest limbs. 

I noticed another vine on the plain terminated with enormous 
clusters of large, beautiful flowers. It was an Alstrcemeria. 
Other species grow here, but none so splendid. I found, also 
growing by the road-side, Tropseolum majus, known to children 
at home as " stertian," and also two or three other species. How 
came the stertian in our gardens? Who sent the seeds from 
this plain, and whither, and why ? What merit has diffused the 



FENCES. 131 

little vine over tlie world ? Lastly, here an enormous herb, or 
a stout shrub, raises its head six or eight feet high, crowned with 
a profusion of cream-colored pendent solanate flowers eight inch- 
es long. It is Datura arborea, known as borrachero, or the in- 
toxicator. There is a yellow-flowered variety, and another spe- 
cies with smaller red flowers — D. sanguinea — is cultivated in 
some patios in Bogota. ' 

The plain appeared so much like prairie that I often forg# 
myself. It is inclosed from the road by ditches, often made of 
two rows of deep square pits, alternating with each other, so that 
the idea of leaping it suggests instantly that of a broken bone. 
The arrangement is exactly that of two rows of cells in a honey- 
comb. Farther on I saw a man making or renewing a ditch of 
the ordinary description. He scooped the earth up with a pad- 
dle, or his hands, and put it into a piece of hide, in which he 
threw it upon the bank. At other places a thick, high wall of 
rammed earth — tapias — or of large unburned bricks — adobe — 
serves as a fence, but it must have a roof of burned tiles, or a 
protection of twigs of bushes, laid on transversely and covered 
with sod. 

Fences are rare in this country. I reached Guaduas before 
learning the Spanish for fence. Very few indeed are of wood. 
I asked a man the reason of this, and he replied that wood would 
be stolen for fuel. I suggested that at home the study of the Bi- 
ble in Sabbath-schools had been found an effectual preventive of 
petty thefts, when severer remedies of law, and other man-traps, 
had proved of no avail. He replied that he had been informed 
that we used mutilated copies of the Bible in these schools. He 
thought the measure questionable, even for so laudable an object 
as to protect fences. This man is one of the few gentlemen who 
still keep up their fasts, confess, and commune. He is an ex- 
ception. 

At one place, in an immense pasture, we saw hundreds of cat- 
tle, and some men on horseback examining them or catching 
some, but the scene of operations was too far from the road for 
me to observe them sufficiently. As the mode is different there 
and in the great plains east of Bogota from that practiced here in 
the Cauca, I am sorry not to have seen both. 

The rich proprietors on this plain are not highly respected by 



132 



NEW GRANADA. 




THE OEEJON. 



the gentry of keener wits and lighter purses, who call them 
Orejones, or big-eared ; but why, I really can not tell. They 
describe them as big, burly, brutal, and butcher-like, with a 
characteristic face recognized every where, and which marks the 
bearer as rich and stupid. But I have great fear of doing them 
an injustice, and an impression that a nearer acquaintance with 
them would bring out some excellent qualities. 

The above sketch is by one of these characters, and is as 
bad as it well can be and be faithful, but faithful it is. It is 
exactly as I saw him when I found him paused on his steed 
near a low, tile-roofed venta on the Sabana, as they call the 
great plain. 

Let us study him. In every feature of his face is written 



FARMER OF THE PLAIN. 133 

Orejon ; and the handkerchief tied on under his hat but makes 
the expression of his countenance the more pitiable. His broad 
jipijapa hat is covered with a case (funda) of red oiled cloth, and 
is held on by a borboquejo or string passing under the chin. 
His ruana is of wool, a mixture of a dingy color and bright 
stripes. His nether man is encased in zamarras of goat-skin 
with the hair on. They are made like the legs of pantaloons, 
connected only by the waistband. The feet are armed with a 
formidable spur, and thrust into brass or copper slipper-shaped 
stirrups, which cost from eight to twelve dollars. Into our or- 
dinary stirrup of the north — estribo de aro, hoop-stirrup — he 
would not put his foot. 

His Rosinante is of the meek, tame kind when he has no fear 
of the spur, but knows what it is to be severely ridden, and has 
more long fasts in the year than his master. Under the bridle 
is a halter — jaquima — the end secured to the saddle ; it serves 
oftenest to confine the horse by the simple contrivance of pull- 
ing its broad, worsted-worked head-piece down over the eyes. 
Little is seen of the saddle save the well-filled pockets on 
which the rider's hands now rest, and the back strap — arretran- 
ca — so useful in riding down stairs to tierra caliente. Well, 
you have seen the worst of him. The best is, that in morals he 
is on a par with, or above the average character of those who 
speak so lightly of him. 

Again we saw great stacks of wheat, and men thrashing wheat 
beneath the feet of mules, and others throwing it up against the 
wind, a primitive mode of separating it from the chaff. This 
plain is the great wheat-field of the republic ; and, although in 
all the colder parts it will grow readily, it is only in these an- 
cient beds of mountain lakes that the land is level enough to ad- 
mit of the rude cultivation practiced here. Off the plain of Bo- 
gota I have never seen a plow, and only once there have I seen 
one that threw up such a furrow that you could tell which way 
the plow had been drawn. In other words, the plow here is in 
the primitive state, an instrument for scratching, not for turning 
the soil. 

Now we have on our right, near the shore of the plain, a small 
town, with its little church, not half a mile from the road. It is 
Serrezuela, the head of a little district of 1094 souls. Next we 



134 NEW GEANADA. 

come to Cuatro Esquinas — the Four Corners. Here are several 
houses at the junction of our road with one from La Mesa, which 
enters the plain at Barro Blanco. This, too, is macadamized to 
the edge of the plain. We have been coming from the north- 
west, and La Mesa lies due west from Bogota, so that this is 
the ordinary road for the Upper Magdalena, the Cauca, the Pa- 
cific, and Ecuador. Standing at the Four Corners, the road east 
goes to Bogota ; west, you go on the northwestern road to Hon- 
da and the Atlantic, and south, the road leads to the western and 
southern parts of New Granada. The north road leads to the 
little ancient Indian town of Funza, once the capital of the plain 
when Bogota was only a watering-place. It is a pity that they 
had not pitched on the western side of the plain, where there 
must be more sun and less rain, so as to save me this long ride ; 
but the copious cold streams rushing down to the plain from the 
eastern ridge drew the town to the junction of the last slope 
with the plain. 

A little farther east an immense gateway gave passage to a 
road up to a building large enough for a railroad depot. It was 
only an ordinary hacienda or farm-house. Large houses are a 
weakness of the Orejones, and they delight especially in. a gate 
of magnificent proportions. 

Now my eye catches a little white spot half way up the blue 
barrier of mountain before me. It must be the church of Mont- 
serrate. I now scan more clearly the ground beneath it, and 
see lying straight before me, and in full view, the city of Bogota. 
It had lain hid so long on account of its dingy color, so closely 
resembling the hill behind it. Besides the dark-yellow front of 
the Cathedral, which rises in ample proportions, fronting the 
plain, you see little else than tiled roofs. A distant city is al- 
ways a blotch upon the canvas. It has none of the beauty of 
a village, and is but a chaos of roofs mixed hap-hazard with 
steeples. How could it be otherwise ? Still, the State-house 
at Boston, St. Paul's in London, St. Peter's in Bome, and the 
Cathedral at Bogota, all give a character to the respective cities, 
as if they were the only buildings in them — they are, in fact, 
the only features they have. 

The road advances straight toward the city till it meets the 
lowest part of the plain, the marshes through which the slug- 



TWO BATTLE-FIELDS. 135 

gish Bogota creeps toward its only possible exit from the Saba- 
na at the south. Here we turn almost north, and seek, for miles, 
a place to cross. We pass the hacienda of Quito, the owner 
of which lost much in my estimation by receiving full price for 
a horse too weak for me to ride, and which, indeed, I could hard- 
ly drive before me, as I ascended on foot the weary steeps from 
La Mesa to the plain ; but he lets mules on a wholesale scale, 
and if he gave heed to reclamations, he would suffer a thousand 
impositions. Besides, if it is his portrait which I have given a 
few pages before, I am amply revenged. 

The Dutchmen had preceded us on fresh horses, taken at 
Facatativa, and, as the road at last turned down to the river, 
the little Venezolano, who had not stopped to be acclimated at 
Guaduas, became too unwell to keep on ; and Martinez, in whose 
charge he was, stopped with him at a venta to await the cargas, 
and I proceeded entirely alone. 

But let us pause a moment at the causeway that leads straight 
toward Bogota again, and is conducting us down to Puente 
Grande, the bridge over the Bogota. Near where we stand the 
fates of two revolutions have been decided. Behind us, as we 
face the city, is the field of Santuario, two leagues from Bogo- 
ta, say 5% miles. Here, on the 27th August, 1830, in the lan- 
guage of Samper,* " the fanatics of the plain threw themselves, 
in the name of the most holy Virgin," upon the troops of Pres- 
ident Joaquin Mosquera, routed them, and placed the usurper 
Urdaneta on a dictator's throne. The reader must be caution- 
ed that there was another battle of a Santuario in the province 
of Antioquia in October, 1829. 

Turn your face again toward the bridge and Bogota, and on 
your left is the field of Culebrera. Nay, the very ground under 
our feet has been drenched in human blood, for here where we 
stand died the revolution of 1840, in a vain attempt to pass 
this causeway and bridge on the 28th October. All Bogota had 
been thrown into commotion by the approach of insurgents from 
Socorro. Priests and women had aided in the transportation of 
all the military stores to the Plaza, and the conversion of the 
eight blocks adjoining it into a citadel, when here, at the very 
threshold of the capital, "the Revolution of the Governors" 
breathed its last. 

* Apuntos para la Historia, page 148. 



136 



NEW GEANADA. 



The Bogota, as we here pass it, is rather a marsh than a riv- 
er. A small outlay, no doubt, would drain a large portion of 
it. Beautiful white cranes were flying over its shores in large 
numbers. They are called garza, and are probably Ardea alba. 
One species offish alone is caught in this chilly, sluggish stream, 
and this has a sort of reptilian look, which belies its excellent 
flavor. They call it capitan. It is almost finless, and must be 
slow in its motions. How came it up here ? When the ichthy- 
ology of the Andes shall have been studied, some curious facts 
will appear. 




INDIANS GOING TO MARKET. 



Nothing has touched my heart more than to see the poor peo- 
ple, women especially, loaded with articles that they carry to 
market. Once, when I saw a couple loaded like those before 
us, a whole day's walk from Bogota, I could not restrain my 
tears. Look at this couple in raspon hats. The man wears 
nothing more, perhaps, except his pantalones and ruana, or he 
may have a scanty camisa besides. Except the mantellina un- 
der the woman's hat, and the camisa that extends but a little 
below her waist, she wears only a chircate, a piece of cloth, like 
a shawl, wrapped around her, and held in place by a belt called 



INDIANS OF TIERRA FRIA. I37 

a maure. The fish they carry, with each a rush through its 
gills, are not uniform enough in their diameter to he the capitan 
— too large at the thorax — therefore I suspect they come from 
tierra templada. Their guambias then probably contain yuca 
or plantains. Happy they if they shall succeed in selling all 
they have, including the dog, whose own feet have brought him. 

I passed these poor people at Puente Grande, and thought 
myself entering the suburbs of Bogota, especially when I reach- 
ed Fontibon. This is the head of a district of 1985 souls, sep- 
arated from Bogota by farms and marshes, and by what I 
thought was rather a long strip of road. This is the turning- 
point of many a little ride from the city, and a very convenient 
place to dispose of some loose change. Probably a billiard-ta- 
ble could be found, or a pack of cards, and possibly every other 
appliance of gambling known at this altitude. 

Two circular enlargements of the road here excited my curi- 
osity, but my inquiries were in vain. I subsequently learned 
that they are called las Vueltas de la Vireina : they were made 
for the turning-places for the carriage of the Viceroy's lady, 
which was too cumbrous to turn in the ordinary width of the 
road. After this, a sudden contraction of the road, as if a bridge 
with a high parapet, announced the entrance of Bogota, which 
must mark the conclusion of this chapter. 



CHAPTER IX. 

POSADA AT BOGOTA. 



A House at Bogota. — Servants. — Abnormal Cookery. — A Visit to the Kitchen. 
— A Discovery. — Sickness. — Rooms and Furniture. — Food and Fruits. — A 
Love Affair. 

The reader surely can have no wish to know the precise 
names of those who for sixteen dollars per calendar month gave 
me shelter, food, and attendance, and all the other thousand com- 
forts and annoyances incident to family life in Bogota. That 
city has no hotel, and but one boarding-house, and as that is an 
English one, and has few inmates that do not speak English al- 
most entirely, the very words "board" and "boarding-house" 



138 NEW GKANADA. 

have scarcely an equivalent in the popular language. Perhaps, 
like the English word " self-government," these too may be yet 
transferred to the language to which the idea is now foreign. 

The normal way of living here is to hire a house or a " habi- 
tation," and either eat at a fonda, have your meals sent in to 
you from a fonda, or hire a cook. This last implies either that 
you also go to market and have your provisions stolen at home, 
or send your cook to market to steal your money. The last is 
preferable, if the cook be not insatiable ; but an alternation of 
evils is always better than the long continuance of the same, so 
you should at least make a part of your purchases. It is not 
wise to turn off a servant for peculation, for you may get in his 
place one who has been long out of employment, and who, con- 
sequently, has some months' back stealing to do. It would not 
be imprudent to take a servant into your service who has just been 
discharged for theft, for of all thieves an unsuspected one is the 
worst. In a word, any inquiry into the morals of your servants 
is simply ridiculous ; you may rest assured that they have none. 

From all these perplexities I was saved by a letter of intro- 
duction from Mr. Gooding to Don Fulano de Tal. This I de- 
livered in person to la Senora Tomasa, his wife, in five minutes 
after the close of the last chapter. La Senora Tomasa is said 
to be the fattest woman in Bogota, where obesity is not common. 
She is chiefly characterized by a head of black hair that always 
looks like a rat's nest, but there is no part of her whole person 
that is not in keeping with it. The worst of her is external ; 
but a man with a strong mind and a strong stomach makes lit- 
tle account of externals. I followed Mr. Gooding's advice, and 
became at once her guest. 

She showed me the house, which was a casa claustrada of one 
story, with a second patio behind the first, built only on two 
sides, and a third behind that, which has only a shed (XVIII.) 
on one side. The front is equal to about three house-fronts in 
a Northern city. It fronts the west, and the zaguan (1) is in 
the northwest corner. It is paved with stones of the size of a 
double fist. The door from the zaguan to the patio is very 
large, and is opened only to let in horses. It has a little door 
cut in it, and, as you pass, you must raise your foot and lower 
your head. This last I often forgot to do till I had received a 
blow. 



HOUSE IN BOGOTA. 



139 




CASA CLAUSTRADA. 



1. Zaguan. 
II. Corredor. 

3. Sala. 

4. Bed-room. 

5. Tienda. 

6. Dining-room. 

7. Servants' Dormitory. 

8. Guests' Room. 

9. Host's Sleeping-room. 



10 and 11. Proprietor's Rooms. 
12. Passage. 
XIH. Back Corredor. 

14. Study. 

15. Pantry. 

16. Kitchen. 

17. Passage. 
XVHI. Shed for Horses. 



The front was occupied by the sala (3), with its portraits of 
Mary and Joseph, and a nice image-closet, that contained a Do- 
lores or la Dolorosa ; that is, a Mary, with a dagger in her heart, 
her hands spread out, with a cloth lying across them, and her 
upturned eyes red with weeping. Some stuffed birds ; two sofas, 
of chintz ; a strange ottoman, that looked like the middle section 
of a trough, with flaring sides, and the matting on the floor com- 
pleted the furniture. Carpets are not to be expected in ordi- 
nary houses here. But I forget an important and rather uncom- 
mon article — a good mantel-clock. 

The adjoining bed-room (4) was devoted to the riding estab- 
lishment of Don Fulano, his gun, his blunderbuss, and other 
precious articles. The windows of the parlor and this room 
opened to the street. The south side of the patio was occupied 
with a little dining-room (6), having no window, and a little 
room (7) with an unglazed window, where three servants slept. 
The east side had one large room (8), with a door and window, 
which became my quarters. Next was a passage (12) to the 
second court, closed with a leathern door by day and stout wood- 
en ones at night. North of this was the family sleeping-room 
(9), which extended into the corner so as to leave no room for a 
window. On the north side were two little rooms (10 and 11) 



140 NEW GRANADA. 

appropriated to Don Pastor, the landlord, who occasionally came 
to town and spent a night. All these windows were furnished 
with a reja, and with doors to them, and most of them, also, with 
glazed sash on hinges. Glass is almost a necessary to the rich 
here, but unknown to me in all other places in New Granada. 

The first patio was paved, but had several plum-trees, cher- 
ished objects with Don Fulano, and some pots of flowers. Its 
corredor (II.) had a matting on the northern half, as this was 
more trodden by visitors and less used by servants than the 
rest. The second patio had an unpaved garden, with a fig-tree, 
a papaya, more plums, and a minute apple-tree half dead with 
cold. By way of annuals, there were potatoes and other escu- 
lents. The west side of this patio was occupied with my little' 
study (14), an open corredor (XIIL), and a dirty pantry (15). 
A few steps led down to a still dirtier kitchen (16), to a little 
space (17) containing an oven, in which there never has been a 
fire, and to the door of the third patio. This is all paved, has 
a shed (XVIII.) and manger on the south side, with a door 
opening on a back street or vacant lot. 

This place, designed to accommodate more horses than the 
house could hold of guests, was entirely in the occupation of a 
tlog of the Newfoundland breed and feminine gender, whose off- 
spring were held by the Senora at high prices, as they were dif- 
ficult to raise at lower altitudes. These would do well but for 
the supposed nightly visits of the bats, who are said to keep 
them poor by sucking their blood. No one doubts these vam- 
pire stories, but some confirmation of them would be desirable. 

While I was looking at these things, a servant-girl had placed 
on the parlor-table a little cup of chocolate, a slice of cake, and 
a saucer of sweetmeats. This was my dinner that day, as fre- 
quently happens on a journey. This over, I sallied out to meet 
my baggage, which, fortunately, was just entering town at the 
close of twilight. We proceeded to the little Plaza of San Yic- 
torino, and had halted for an instant, when I heard an English 
voice ask, " Is there an American here ?" It was Mr. John A. 
Bennet, our excellent consul, who had learned that he had a 
countryman coming in the party. And I have never found him 
less prompt or less friendly to any stranger, even though he come, 
as I did, without any letters to him. 



BOGOTAN COOKEEY. 141 

Thus I settled myself in the family of Don Fulano de Tal. 
A little cot-bed gave me a warmer embrace than my cold couch 
at El Botello. I awoke from it, and waited in the morning to 
see whether I was to eat in the house. While meditating on 
this, Ignacia, an Indian girl of 17 years, and a little over five 
feet in stature, came into my room and spread a cloth on my 
table. What else she put on I can not say, only first there 
was something that they called sopa, because it resembled soup 
in being eaten with a spoon. I can offer no conjecture as to 
the ingredients. Another dish was the ajiaco that we saw at 
Cuni: it contained potato, fluid a little thickened with something, 
and traces of meat. Another dish contained what comparative 
anatomy would call chicken, but the palate would conjecture 
might be lizard. But it is colored yellow. This is one of the 
inventions of Spanish cookery. It is often done with arnotto, 
called achiote or bija. It is Bixa Orellana. Some time after- 
ward I objected to this addition, which only served to prevent 
the eye from judging of the real condition of things. La Sefiora 
named it cover-dirt (tapa-mugre), and banished it from her kitch- 
en. My breakfast ended in chocolate. 

My dinner seemed but a repetition of my breakfast, except 
that it ended in sweetmeats instead of chocolate. As to what 
occupied the butter-plate, I ventured to suggest that if the but- 
ter were on one plate by itself, and the other ingredients on an- 
other, I could perhaps make a mixture more in accordance with 
my own palate. The good lady tried to improve on my sug- 
gestion, but with indifferent success. So minute were the par- 
ticles, and so intimate their dissemination through the butyra- 
ceous gangue, that it seemed as easy for the Ethiopian to change 
his skin. The result was, that though Bogota furnishes a doz- 
en kinds of good bread, I soon forgot the use of butter. 

All bread is made in small loaves of 16 for a dime (a cuarto 
each). None is made in families, as far as I ever knew, nor 
have I yet seen a bakery. I suspect those that make it sell but 
a dollar's worth or so per day. There is little consumption for 
the article, as it is beyond the reach of the poor. 

Only the last session at the table afforded unmingled pleas- 
ure. I can not call it a meal. It was but a single cup of 
chocolate, with a piece of bread or cake, a saucer of dulce — 
sweetmeats — and a silver sroblet of cold water. 



142 NEW GEANADA. 

After a day or two I asked permission to come to the family 
table, which was acceded to with much satisfaction, but my lit- 
tle tea continued to be in my own room. The change of table 
gave my landlady a better opportunity to study my tastes, 
which she did with the diligence that I afterward gave to those 
of an armadillo. She spared no pains to gratify my palate. I 
am sorry she succeeded no better ; but, while my pet starved 
to death, hers has survived. And, if variety would have suf- 
ficed, none could have excelled her ; and my dishes were almost 
as exclusively mine as when I ate alone. Never was hostess 
more indefatigable, nor guest more uncomplaining in his suffer- 
ings. Suffice it that the experiments lasted the two months of 
my stay. 

I dare not undertake to tell you of all the strange things I 
ate and attempted in this time. One of their dishes was blood 
thickened, seasoned, etc. This I would not eat. I based my 
refusal on the decision of the Council of Jerusalem (Acts, xv., 
29) ; but they make nothing of that, for they seem to think that 
in decrees of councils, as in acts of Legislatures, the last is bind- 
ing to the exclusion of all the others. Now, as the Council of 
Trent did not command, as I am aware, to " abstain from meats 
offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and 
from fornication," they can not be expected to be very scrupu- 
lous on such points. 

One day I wanted to see the Senora, and she was in the kitch- 
en. So I went in. Now, good reader, I am caught. I have 
been dreading these fifty pages the necessity of describing a 
kitchen. Well, I submit to my fate. Of course, the kitchen 
has no floor. A floor would be useless — nay, impossible. As 
well might you carpet a foundry. Second, it has no chimney. 
A chimney would not be impossible — there are several in Bogota, 
but of what use are they ? Smoke consists of creosote, acetic 
acid, and carbon. The last is perfectly inert, the first a valu- 
able antiseptic, and the other an important condiment, and no 
harm can arise from an admixture of the three as in bacon. A 
portion of the roof is raised, so as to permit the egress of smoke 
and steam without admitting rain. 

Most ordinary cookery is done in a sort of forge, having a se- 
ries of littkT"fire-places over which ollas can be placed. These \ 



THE KITCHEN.. 143 

are coarse earthen pots, often unglazed, and of various shapes 
and sizes. The olleta of cast brass, in which chocolate is made, 
resembles a quart pitcher in size and shape. 

And now what is doing here ? Petronila is busy at the grind- 
ing-stone bruising wet maize to dough. The Indian corn here 
never enters a water-mill, nor does it enter largely into Gran- 
adan cookery. La Sefiora is seated on a low stool ; before her is ]J 
ajar — tinajon — as large as the oil-jars in the Forty Thieves, each 
of which was capable of concealing a man in its capacious ab- 
domen. It is mounted on three stones — tulpas — so that a fire 
can be put under it where it is and when she chooses. Here 
you see the convenience of dispensing with those troublesome 
contrivances, floors and chimneys. On her right hand is a tray 
of Petronila's freshly-ground dough, and a dish of peas (alver- 
jas) or chick-peas (garbanzas — Cicer Arietinum). On her left is 
a tray containing part of the mortal remains of a pig, cut in pieces 
of about an ounce each, bone extra, and a pile of the green leaves 
of an Indian-shot plant — a Canna, called achira. It may be Can- 
na Indica, and its leaves are used here, like those of other Maran- 
tate plants, for wrapping up things. 

She takes half a leaf, puts in it a spoonful of dough, a spoon- 
ful of peas, and a piece of pork, folds the whole up, and deposits 
it in the tinajon. This she repeats till the ingredients are ex- 
hausted. Water is then put in. All Saturday night these lit- 
tle green packages of miscellany are boiling over a slow fire, and 
on Sunday morning La Seiiora's tienda is thronged with pur- 
chasers of tamales. Imagine a tamal now on your plate. You 
open it with fork or fingers, and you see what irresistibly strikes 
you as an accidental juxtaposition, not mixture, of heterogene- 
ous matters, like the contents of a turkey's crop disclosed by 
the carving-knive. It is hard to overcome prejudice, but I 
have learned to eat tamales with relish, and have even perpe- 
trated the pun, "No esta mal, it is not bad." JVb es tamal 
would mean it is not a tamal. Es and esta both mean is, but 
with a curious difference. Es refers to a permanent or essen- 
tial condition, esta to a temporary or accidental one. Esta naran- 
ja es dulce,j?ero esta agria : this orange is sweet, but it is sour, 
means that it is of the sweet species, but not sweet yet because 
not ripe. Soi mal means I am wicked ; estoy mal, I am sick. 



144 NEW GEANADA. 

But I have said nothing of Don Fulano ; indeed, there is lit- 
tle to say. He is the reverse of his wife, a dry little Quiteiio, 
rather neat, and as friendly as a man can be. He was a help- 
meet for La Senora in the arduous task of pleasing her guest. 
Senor de Tal had but one weakness : after church, at which he 
was quite constant, he must go to the cock-fight every Sunday. 
He never lost large sums, for he could not afford to bet high. 
His only income was derived from his salary as shop-keeeper in 
a small dry-goods store. A sprightly little boy, of very inof- 
fensive, affectionate manners, was all their family. 

For a long time the southwest corner of the house (No. 5 of 
the plan on page 139) was a mystery to me. I thought it 
might be another kitchen, and, what seemed strange, there was 
evidently an immense amount of talking done there. One day 
Senora Tomasa called me to follow her through the crooked 
passage that led to it, with the air of one who was about to re- 
veal a surprising mystery. On my left hand, in the passage, 
was one of those places like a blacksmith's forge, where much 
minor cookery is done ; on the other were some huge tinajas, 
sheathed in hide, called also gacha or tinajon, filled with a nasty- 
looking, whity-yellow liquid, covered with the bubbles of an 
active fermentation. It was chicha, the great bane of the tierra 
fria — an Indian drink, compounded of maize, sirup, and water, 
that carries the Granadino just as far toward intoxication as he 
generally desires to go ; for he differs from us in that he gets 
satiated before he gets drunk, and we only when we can swal- 
low no more ; and the difference is in his nature, not in his 
beverage, for, if he drinks aguardiente, it is all the same. Chi- 
cha mascada, prepared by chewing the maize, if it exists except 
in the imagination or credulity of travelers, must be rare indeed. 
Most persons here believe in its existence, but I know of no one 
that has seen it prepared. 

Well, with a sudden turn of the passage I found myself in a 
tienda, behind a counter, and face to face with a goodly assem- 
bly of customers. Whether she wished to show me to them, 
or them to me, I know not, but she appeared highly satisfied, 
and must have appreciated my surprise. It was a tienda of the 
lowest kind, and would, at the North, have been a horrible nui- 
sance. It was a damp evening, and the little space in front of 



FEMALE DRESS. 145 

the counter was wedged full of people, one of whom was tortur- 
ing one of those horrid little abortions of the guitar, a tiple. In 
a brief space, procured at the expense of a greater condensation 
of the rest of the crowd, a forlorn couple were trying to dance. 
Others were talking, and totumas of the turbid fluid were pass- 
ing from mouth to mouth. Others would force their way up 
to the counter, and expend a cuartillo in bread, chocolate, lard, 
and wood, receiving as a bonus a drink of chicha from the ever- 
open tinaja behind the counter. The oldest and largest of the 
servants, whose name it is blasphemy to utter lightly, is the 
presiding genius of this condensed bar-room for both sexes. 

Of the cook I know nothing, except that, like all the rest of 
the servants, she rarely changes her camisa. One of them one 
day made her appearance in a clean camisa, and I took occasion 
to express so much admiration that the others felt constrained to 
follow suit. 

Not to use terms for dress before defining them, I may as 
well here describe an ordinary peasant -dress throughout; nor 
is the task a long one. The camisa begins a few inches below 
the chin, and extends as far below the waist. It has an inch 
or two of sleeve, and a sort of collar, cape, or ruffle falling down 
from the upper edge — arandela. This is often embroidered with 
red or blue, but the garment, when clean, is white. The ena- 
guas extends from the waist to a proper distance from the / 
ground. As this may be the only other garment, an accidental 
loss of it might discompose even the least reserved of the wear- 
ers of it ; so it is divided into two flaps by openings at the 
sides, and each one is secured to the body by a separate string, 
that of the forward lobe being tied behind, and the other in 
front ; so the whole person, or enough of it, is scientifically cov- 
ered, but the two garments do not overlap much. Add to the 
dress in-doors a woolen shawl — the mantellina — which, like the 
enaguas, should be always blue or black, and a man's palm-leaf 
hat, and you have the peasant Granadina in sufficient dress for 
street or church. In warmer climates, a thinner shawl or large 
handkerchief — panolon — is substituted for the mantellina. 

A girl named Petronila formerly made her appearance every 
morning, with her mucura and long tube, bringing water. I am 
sorry to say that, when a regiment stationed in Bogota left for 

K 



146 NEW GKANADA. 

the south, she disappeared. These bodies of troops are said to 
be followed by more women than there are men in them. 

While here I paid the common matriculation fee to a resi- 
dence — an attack of the diarrhoea. The exciting cause was a 
brief dip in the icy waters of the Fucha, a mile or so south of 
the city, where others bathe almost by the hour with impunity. 
I am sorry that I must believe that the attack was prolonged 
by the interference of my medical advisers in my plan of treat- 
ment. 

My disease involved a variety of privations besides that of 
locomotion, and impressed me with the idea that my motherly 
hostess had not the talent that we often find in kind ladies of 
her age. She fed me at first on sagu — arrow-root (hence, per- 
haps, our word sago), of which New Granada cultivates all it 
uses, and no more. If I found this insipid, the chicken-broth 
that succeeded it was not much less so, for the Andine cooks 
have an innate faculty of destroying the natural flavor of all 
meats. Turkeys are here reduced, by their process, to a viand 
as unpalatable as the rest. 

One other little circumstance occurs to me : from some cause, 
I had occasion to spit frequently, and laid down a paper on the 
floor for a spittoon. La Senora sent in a mat as a substitute 
for the paper ; and the Indian girl, after putting it just where I 
wished, spat on the floor beside it, and went out. Indeed, I had 
no other reason for using the mat than to keep myself from 
learning nasty tricks, for there was no way of saving my floors 
firom my visitors, nor even from La Senora herself, although, for 
a wonder, I never saw her or any of her family smoke. The 
servants, I presume, smoked, but it is contrary to etiquette for 
a servant to smoke in the presence of superiors, or for a soldier 
to do so on duty. I never should have changed my boarding- 
place but for circumstances that connected me with a compan- 
ion for traveling. He was a cachaco : the word indicates such 
young men as wear coats, and might include all English words 
from buck and dandy to gentleman. The cachaco in question, 
whom I will call Don Pepe (Pepe means Jose Maria), was an 
LL.D., a graduate of the Holy Ghost College of Sefior Lorenzo 
Lleras (since Secretary for Foreign Affairs). 

We commenced our life in common with three thievish serv- 



CHANGE OF LODGINGS. 147 

ants, who professed to take charge of some horses said to be kept 
in some pasture near the city for us, but we soon succeeded in 
getting the two best off our hands. As for the other, Bentura 
(Buenaventura), nobody would have him, so we kept him. 

We took rooms in a large casa baja, opposite the fonda of 
Dona Paz. She rented this house to let to guests, and she took 
us in hopes that we should frequent her table also. This did 
not suit Don Pepe, who alleged a want of neatness in her din- 
ing-room, indicative of still more in her kitchen. Of our rooms 
we could not complain. Besides a small bed-room, with a cow- 
hide bed for Don Pepe and a cot-bed for me, who am too much 
of a Sybarite to sleep well on the soft side of a dry hide, we had 
a huge parlor, with three sofas, three tables, two chairs, and two 
looking-glasses, all of which might have been sold for between 
five and ten dollars in Chatham Square. 

But now came a vermilion edict from Dona Paz that all who 
occupied her rooms must patronize her fonda exclusively. But 
we had found at another fonda a table more to my satisfaction 
than I have elsewhere found among the Spanish race. I ex- 
plained to La Seiiora Margarita the necessity we should be un- 
der of leaving her table or finding new rooms. She assured me 
that she had no rooms fit for us ; but she showed me an inner 
pantry, or store-room, that, besides communicating with the pan- 
try, had a door opening into the sala, and another that opened 
upon what once was the corredor of a back patio. A portion of 
this corredor had been transformed into a snug little bed-room, 
at the expense of great ingenuity and very little money. I at 
once insisted on having the two rooms, and that night our two 
servants carried our trastos — effects, including monturas, trunks, 
atillos, and petacas — on their shoulders to the large room. The 
pantry door was locked, the sala door unlocked, and both keys 
delivered to me. The rooms were entirely transformed ; for La 
Senora Margarita had set about it herself, and worked, she as- 
sured me, "like a demonio." 

Don Pepe slept, as before, in a stylish cowhide bed in the 
large room with the baggage and servants ; and as all the light 
came through glass doors from my room, of which they shut the 
blinds every night, they all slept as late as they chose, undis- 
turbed by daylight. I was equally suited with my little room, 



148 NEW GKANADA. 

that just held the indispensable cot-bed, bought expressly for 
me, a table, and a chair, with space on the walls to hang my 
maps. Here I was at the top of Fortune's wheel, and I expect 
nothing equal to it, or at all to be compared to it, in all my ex- 
ile. I paid here, as before, sixteen dollars per calendar month. 

I did have one cause of complaint on the first night. My pil- 
low felt too much like a well-stuffed rag-bag. La Senora would 
have it righted as soon as mentioned ; so we ripped it open, and 
behold ! as much cotton, in solid wads, just as it came off the 
seed, as could possibly be got in. We picked loose a third of 
it, and filled the pillow nicely, and the lady probably jotted down 
in her note-book that los Ingleses are very particular about soft 
pillows. 

La Senora was an Ibaguena — a native of Ibague — quite a 
handsome matron, perhaps more prepossessing than any other 
that I have seen here ; nor were my expectations disappointed, 
for she was a nice lady, excepting, perhaps, a violence of temper, 
which I never knew excited without cause, though occasionally 
it went beyond bounds. When she raged, it was like a sea or 
like a lioness — she never fretted. She kept a tienda and a 
fonda, both of superior order, and sold no cliicha, and more 
brandy than rum. Her husband, who was a major on half pay 
or pension, appeared to be a confidential boarder, and her best 
friend rather than her liege lord. I do not know what his busi- 
ness was, but it may have been gambling. They had three fine 
little daughters, the oldest of whom went to a boarding-school 
a few blocks off, but occasionally came home of a Sunday morn- 
ing. The second went to the same school as a day scholar. 
A strong-willed little boy, who had a great passion for riding a 
horse around the corredor, and a babe in charge of a wet nurse, 
completed the family record. 

The house, which they rented of a friar, was a casa baja claus- 
trada — a one-story house, with the rooms opening on the patio 
or court. It stood on the corner, and was much larger than 
usual. The corner room opened on both streets, but had noth- 
ing to do with the house, although it appeared to be a part of 
it, while the tienda, which appeared to belong to the next house, 
as seen externally, had its only inner door opening into a spa- 
cious refectory, where at first our meals were served with those 



THE NEW POSADA. 149 

of chance comers who paid by the meal. At my instance, we 
removed to the family-table in a separate dining-room. The 
husband had a room that served him for bed-room and office, 
far removed from the two rooms that served as dormitories for 
the lady, the children, and the nurse. Another room served for 
several female servants, including the shop-tender — cajera — 
while of other rooms I knew no destination. A fellow-boarder, 
a physician in poor health, a relative of Margarita, occupied still 
another room in the house. Back of the house was a large pa- 
tio, divided in two by a high brick wall. One half was paved, 
and the other may have once been a garden, of which a fig-tree 
and a papaya seemed to be the only remains. In a shed at the 
back side was an oven, with a peep-hole made in the side. 

Such were the premises where I found more physical comfort 
than in any other Granadan family. Our meals were two a 
day, at about 9 and 2. The latter nearly always included a 
dish called puchero, made of boiled beef, potatoes, and cabbage, 
not unlike a common boiled dish at the North. It was preceded 
by a soup, often with vermicelli, of which I seldom tasted. A 
delicious dish here was the terminal bud of the palm, but it 
seems almost a crime to destroy a stately tree for so insignificant 
a treat. It is eaten with butter, and commonly called palmiche. 
It is a little curious that, among all the strange Spanish dishes 
I found, the olla podrida never made its appearance. As to ask 
for it would be to commit myself to eating of it, I waited till it 
should come, but it never did. 

We had a good supply of fruits, bought once a week at the 
market. On Friday, and sometimes Saturday, the last course 
was fruit just from market. An immense dish of strawberries, 
with sugar and milk ; the curuba, before mentioned ; a fruit tast- 
ing very much like a cucumber, and therefore called pepino ; and 
bananas : such were the ordinary table-fruits. 

The Granadinos do not understand eggs. They make them 
into an omelet, unpalatable to us, called tortilla : they fry them, 
but, in eating them, they break a hole in the centre of the yolk, 
and put in a good quantity of salt, and after all it seems as if 
they may have been fried in water. They offer you also what 
they call warm eggs — huevos tibios — which are eggs boiled in 
the shell : if they would offer you a bit of nice butter at the 



150 NEW GKANADA. 

same time* you would relish them all the "better. As for cus- 
tard, pie, tart, and pudding, I believe these words have no 
equivalent in Spanish. I have once seen a thing that had the 
same anatomical structure as a pie, and bore the name of pasti- 
11a, but it was an outrage on the palate. 

The pulse kind — LeguminosEe — yielded us a large and puz- 
zling variety of food. It is all the worse for us that the En- 
glish word bean means a different thing on the two sides of the 
Atlantic. The Vicia Faba — in French feve, in Spanish haba 
— is almost unknown with us, and is called Windsor-bean, 
broad-bean, coffee-bean, and horse-bean, but in England is call- 
ed bean. The plant grows over two and less than four feet 
high. The Phaseolus vulgaris — in French haricot, in Spanish 
frijol, frisol, and judia — is from a plant less than two feet high 
(bush-bean), or more than four feet high (kidney-bean, cranber- 
ry-bean, or pole-bean), is almost unknown in England, and there 
called French-bean, but, in some families of the Yankee race, is 
one of the staples of subsistence. The garbanza, chick-pea, 
vetch, or fitch — Cicer Arietinum — is a seed about the size and 
shape of a common pea, but with a protuberance on it that 
seems to detract from its beauty. I do not like the taste so 
well as that of the pea. This also grows here, but is less used 
than the garbanza: it is called alverja — a name applied in 
Spain, I believe, to the chick-pea. To these add the Ervum 
Lens — lentil, ervalenta — here called lenteja, and you have the 
synonymy of these useful articles of food. 

The arracacha is the root of numerous plants in different parts 
of the world, but all allied botanically to the parsnip and carrot. 
Those of New Granada are said to be Conium Arracacha, C. es- 
culenta, and C. xanthorrhiza. Some, or all of these, are plants 
of the uplands, like the potato. I find them insipid ; but, when 
severely pressed with hunger, I have found them delicious fried : 
I have never eaten them in houses except boiled. 

One esculent unfortunately escaped my taste. Some may 
have noticed that our wood sorel, Oxalis violacea, has a scaly 
bulb, too small, however, to be worth eating. A species here, 
Oxalis tuberosa, is cultivated for its little corm or root, called 
oca, which is only about two inches long, and therefore could not 
be advantageously introduced at the North, although it grows 



TKOUBLE IN THE FAMILY. 151 

where potatoes flourish. I have not mentioned the common An- 
tillan yams, Dioscorea alata and D. sativa, here called name ; 
they are not much cultivated away from the coast. I do not 
like them, except when served up like mashed potato. 

But, if any thing tires the traveler in Bogota, it will Tbe the 
pantry, the kitchen, and the dining-room. It makes me feel 
mean to find my mind and pen dwelling so long and so earn- 
estly on such topics. Perhaps it is an inevitable evil incident 
to keeping a soul yet in the flesh, which flesh must be kept up, 
in a land of heterodox cookery. I will now cheerfully close my 
views of domestic life here with a single incident, showing how 
we lost Bentura. 

He was an unwholesome-looking chap, with a piebald skin ; 
the two colors were not supposed to be those of his two parents, 
but owing to a cutaneous disease called carate. If it be not a 
form of leprosy (and it is not here so regarded), it seems to be a 
chronic ulceration sui generis. But let that pass. As we had 
nothing for him to do, he seems to have occasionally absented 
himself from Don Pepe's room of nights, and found more con- 
genial quarters in one occupied by the shop-girl, the cook, and 
another servant of the feminine gender and the class called gua- 
richa. Here his cough several nights reached the ears of the 
head of the family, and one day he recommended to Margarita 
that the sick girl have a sleeping-place where she would not dis- 
turb him. The truth came out that his friend was the sales- 
woman, a valuable servant, who had been with them for some 
years. My lady's fury knew no bounds. She insisted on Ben- 
tura's instant banishment. Unfortunately, Don Pepe had gone 
down to lower lands to thaw out, and I was unwilling to inter- 
fere in the matter till his return ; so she consented that I might 
lock him fast into our large room all alone each night till Don 
Pepe returned. But solitude operates badly on some tempers, 
and next evening, about dark, " el carataso" waxed surly, and 
made some really insulting remarks to the mistress of the house, 
though he did not presume to deny any of the allegations against 
him. She screamed to her husband, and he ran to the spot arm- 
ed with a spear. But I had overheard his speech, and ordered 
the thief to leave the house at once and forever, which he did be- 
fore the spear came in sight. 



152 NEW GRANADA. 



CHAPTER X. 

BOGOTA. 

Streets of Bogota. — Plan of the City. — Plazas. — Public Buildings. — Library. — 
Museum. — Observatory. — Preparations for Execution. — Cemeteries. — Plaza 
de los Martires. — Mode of Execution. — Victims of Morillo. 

We are glad to escape again to the street, and now let us get 
our first impressions of the capital. 

The very first impression that Bogota makes is on the soles 
of the feet, and that is by no means an agreeable one. You feel 
that it is making a beast of you by compelling you to contend 
with pack-mules for passage along the cobble-stone pavement. 
There are no brick sidewalks, and few of flat stone. These are 
but two feet wide, and are highly prized by the mules : a string 
of them never fail to take possession of them when they come 
in their way. 

Look at the houses. None are more than two stories ; most 
are but one. They are whitewashed, but not white. They 
have a plenty of front, a large, ugly portal, and a few small 
grated windows, from which the female inhabitants seem to be 
constantly looking out like prisoners. 

The poor live on the ground floors of the two-story houses, 
in tenements of one room, with no access to court or yard. It 
may seem incredible, but they have none of the outbuildings 
or domestic conveniences thought necessary elsewhere. There 
are no sewers — no drainage — and the ground floors are gener- 
ally damp ; hence the second floors are occupied by the rich, 
and so extremes meet. But here we come to a horse with his 
head in a door and his heels out in the middle of the street. 
We must make the circuit of them : every passer has done so 
for half an hour past. I never knew a horse, mule, or ass to 
kiek in this country, though I am assured that they do. 

The plan of the city was, in the main, laid out by nature. In 
the chapter before the last we were proceeding eastward, and 
had all the vast plain at our back, and our feet stood on the 



PLAN OF BOGOTA. 



153 



threshold of the city, at the very point where the plain "begins 
to rise a little. In the following plan, an asterisk on the west 
side marks the place where the Honda road enters on it. What 
appeared like a bridge, with inscriptions on either side, is, in 
reality, no bridge at all, but rather a bar — as Temple Bar yet is 
in London — to show the entrance to the city. Its site is indi- 
cated by the termination of the two lines that represent the 
road. Just north, on the plain, is a detached square block, oc- 
cupied by the spacious buildings where once was the Colegio 




a. Cemetery. 

b. English Cemetery. 

c. Convent of San Diego. 

d. Quinta de Bolivar. 

e. Rio San Francisco. 

/. Aqueducts for Water-power. 



h. Church of Egipto. 

i. Rio San Agustin. 

k. Aqueducts from the Fucha. 

I. Powder-works (abandoned). 
m. Rio Fucha. 

* Entrance of the Honda Road. 



154 NEW GEANADA. 

of Dr. Lleras, who has since been Secretary of State. Ad- 
vancing, we enter the Carrera de Palace, the widest street of the 
city and of New Granada. It was named for a battle-field of 
1819. The streets generally bear the names of battle-fields or 
provinces. The Carrera of Palace is short and funnel-shaped, 
and terminates in a small square, the Plazuela of San Victorino, 
ornamented by the principal fountain of Bogota, represented by 
a small square block on the plan. It might have been copied 
from some Gothic tomb in Spain ; has, of course, its inscrip- 
tion, its low fence around it — pretil — its numerous jets of wa- 
ter issuing from iron tubes, for which a crowd of girls in blue 
mantellinas and enaguas are contending, each striving to apply 
her own cana to the stream as the mucura of her neighbor is 
full. 

A few paces beyond the fountain is a wall, seemingly low till 
you look over, when you see the River San Francisco (e) ten 
feet below you. It has come down through a deep cleft of the 
mountains, and flows southwest to this point, where it turns 
south, runs half a mile, and then flows west again, out upon 
the plain, in quest of the Bogota. This river has made the 
city, and the principal ward or parish, Barrio del Catedral — 
Cathedral Ward — is shut in between the San Francisco and its 
tributary, the San Agustin (i), which comes down from anoth- 
er gorge, and flows nearly west, both before and after entering 
the San Francisco. An aqueduct — El Agua-nueva — is laid 
from the upper waters of the San Agustin nearly to the San 
Francisco, supplying various streets with water. 

The barrios — wards — take their names from their parish 
churches. The central ward, Barrio del Catedral, then, is al- 
most shut into an angle of the San Francisco by the San Agus- 
tin and the aqueduct. It contains seven parallel streets, run- 
ning straight up the hill from the river to the base of the mount- 
ain, where the broken ground arrests them. These streets are 
crossed by eleven others, running south from the San Francis- 
co to the San Agustin. Each block — calle — of each street has 
a number, and, in common language, also a name, by itself, but 
the names of the streets — carreras — are not used, although 
painted on all the corners. 

The third of the streets that run east (counting from the north) 



STKEETS OF BOGOTA. 155 

crosses the San Francisco by the San Victorino Bridge, and en- 
ters the south corner of the Plazuela of San Victorino, a little 
south of the fountain. All the travel crosses the Plazuela ob- 
liquely to the southeast from the Street of Palace to this bridge. 
I say all ; but all teams of two or more bulls are arrested at 
this bridge, to the no small inconvenience of importing mer- 
chants, all of whom live in the Cathedral Ward. We cross this 
bridge, and we find a rill of water running down the centre of 
the street, which is concave, as Centre Street, New York, used 
to be in days of yore. 

On the first block on the left hand, as you go up east, was 
once seen a flag-staff projecting obliquely over a porton : here 
floated, on special days, in 1852, the stars and stripes, for it 
was then the residence of our charge d'affaires, Hon. Yelverton 
King. 

Nearly opposite, but a little above, was once the Convent of 
San Juan de Dios — Saint John of God — or the Hospital monks. 
The convent church alone remains in the possession of the hier- 
archy : the rest is now national property, and used, as it pro- 
fessedly was before, as a hospital, now at the charge of the 
province. 

We go directly east for five blocks, and let us then turn to 
the south and pause. We are at the business centre of the city. 
The street before us and behind us bears the familiar names of 
Calle Real and Calle de Commercio. We have traversed the 
Calle de t San Juan de Dios ; and the Calle de los Plateros ex- 
tends up to our left. The view on the following page is from a 
daguerreotype by George Crowther, Esq., taken from the bal- 
cony of the American consulate, the house on the northwest of 
the four corners here. In it you face the south. Just one block 
before you, on the right, is the Plaza, and that tall building fac- 
ing it is the Cathedral. 

In front of the whole block, of which the Cathedral is part, 
is an elevated platform, the Altozano. It is broad and level, 
overlooking the Plaza, and descending to it by stone steps run- 
ning the whole length. It is the most public place in Bogota. 
The Church claimed, of course, the best building spot on the 
upper side of the Plaza for the Cathedral. It is not convenient 
for a Catholic church to stand in the centre of a block, as a side 



156 



NEW GKANADA. 




STREET AND CATHEDRAL IN BOGOTA. 



door, Puerta de misericordia — door of mercy — needs to open 
into a side street from the left-hand side of the church as you 
enter — the Gospel side ; so the Cathedral has the north end of 
the west side of the Plaza. Next is a small, old, rich, neglected 
church, once the viceroy's chapel. The pulpit is overlaid with 
tortoise-shell and silver. Beyond is a plain building used as 
a custom-house. 

If the government would erect a building on the south end 
of the block with a facade to correspond to the Cathedral, and 
connect the two fronts by a still higher central part, they might 
make the whole side of the square contribute to the glory of a 
capitol worthy of the great nation whose destinies are yet to be 
ruled there. But they have taken an entire block on the south 
side to erect a capitol, with its front on a side hill, where no ar- 
chitectural genius can make it more than the second building in 
the city. Its walls are as yet only up to the height of the first 
floor, and it is to be hoped that, ere another stone is laid, bet- 
ter counsels will prevail, and that it may be employed, as the 
north side is, for a range of stores. 



STREET-SCENE IN BOGOTA. 157 

On this side of the Cathedral, and separated from it by a 
street which we can not see, is a group of houses, which are 
a fair specimen of the better class of genteel houses in Bogota. 
They hide the mercy-door of the Cathedral, while over its roof is 
seen the top of the cupola of San Carlos. They are stores he- 
low and dwellings above. The ground-floor has no windows. 
The first and second doors on the left are tiendas, while the 
third, partly hidden by two female figures, is the porton. En- 
tering it, you pass through the zaguan to the patio, the stairs, 
and the rooms above. All this is shown by the door-posts and 
the width of the door. 

Above, all the doors are windows, and all the windows doors. 
The balconies rarely approach each other so as to render a tran- 
sit possible from one to another. Beneath the balconies is seen 
a side-walk of brick. Half of the city is furnished with them, 
but none of the others is as wide as that here seen. They 
barely permit the passage of two persons. 

I have little to say of the figures in the street. In the group 
at the left, the nearest of the three is a type of the old ladies 
of Bogota. She is of respectable conservative family, and if she 
did not wear that same round-topped felt hat in the time of the 
viceroys, she at least wore one like it. It became her fresh 
young face then better than it does now, when it proclaims to 
every passer-by, My mistress is not ashamed of being old. The 
bull is loaded with two guambias of potatoes from the paramo 
north of Bogota. That basket on the woman's shoulders, farther 
forward and to the right, reminds me of some that I have seen 
at Choachi, but the bearer seems too tall to be an Indian. 

Passing the Cathedral on our left, and the Plaza on our right, 
we have the foundations of the capitol, not seen in the plate, and 
on our left the pile of San Bartolome', of which San Carlos, the 
Hall of Degrees, and the Libraries are parts. These we pass 
now, as they can not be entered from this street. On the next 
block on our right is the Colegio Militar, which we shall again 
visit. In the rear of this, and almost on the street below, is 
the Observatory, the oldest on the continent, nearer the equa- 
tor, and at a higher altitude than any other. The building is 
now empty, unfurnished, and, to be adapted to modern instru- 
ments, would need a revolving roof. 



158 NEW GRANADA. 

Farther on, we cross the San Agustin Iby a little bridge. 
Then, on our right, is the Convent of San Agustin, the tower 
of which closes the view of the street in the engraving. The 
open space between it and the river is the Plazuela de San 
Agustin. A little farther on, on the third block, and on the 
upper side of the street, is the parish church of Santa Barbara, 
from which the Barrio south of the San Agustin takes its 
name. 

Let us return again to the Plaza and take a view of it. It 
is paved, of course, with small stones. In the centre is a hand- 
some statue of Bolivar, erected by his friend Pepe Paris. It is 
of bronze, executed in Italy, and in very good taste. Bolivar 
gave to Paris the Quinta de Bolivar, marked (d) on the Plan of 
Bogota. 

The lower and western side of the square is occupied by the 
only Northern-looking building in Bogota. It is called Casa de 
Portales and Casa Consistorial. It contains the Halls of Con- 
gress, the office of the Secretary of the Treasury, and the Gen- 
eral Post-office and also that of the city. 

Let us go to the southeast corner of the Plaza and turn up 
east. On our left, as I said, is the Custom-house, and on the 
right the old convent of San Bartolome, that has lately been in 
use as a national college. In the centre of this block they have 
contrived to insert the Church of San Carlos, called by some the 
centre of fanaticism for the nation, and the cradle of the revolu- 
tion of 1851. The Hall of Degrees in this building is not only 
used for the public ceremonies of the college, but also for con- 
certs. It is remarkable for its structure : one half the audi- 
ence faces the other, and the platform is down between the two 
inclined planes occupied by the audience. 

In this same building, too, with the entrance on the east side, 
is the National Library, to which the students of the college 
had also access. The nucleus is a very old library bound in 
parchment, to which there have been added a few thousand vol- 
umes in French, English, German, and other languages. In 
some departments it is quite rich. I noticed over fifty volumes 
on China alone. I would be glad to say more about it, but the 
librarian was an invalid, and neglected his duties sadly, and it 
was very difficult to find it open. 



LIBRARIES OF BOGOTA. 159 

There is another library here that deserves a particular no- 
tice. It is one of the richest collections of pamphlets ever got 
together by the patient industry of any one man of limited 
means. It is the work of Colonel Anselmo Pineda, a man who 
has served his country in a more daring, but never in a more 
honorable manner. After binding and indexing them in the 
most thorough manner, he has presented them to the nation. 
Congress, in return, has voted him a small pension for life, mi- 
nus certain taxes that are always assessed on pensions and sal- 
aries paid by government. There is no end to the attacks and 
defenses in Granadan pamphlets, handbills, and newspapers, all 
of which are here bound in and catalogued. There is no em- 
inent man in the nation who is not assailed on some page of 
this library. Government has unwisely made it too accessible, 
and already has more than one theft occurred of documents that 
can never be replaced. It is to be hoped that this liberality 
will not continue. 

Another room here is a cabinet of minerals and woods, the 
best in the nation. My first visit was brief, and I never was 
able to find it open again. Here, too, I recollect one piece of 
Vandalism, a portrait cut and ruined. Below is what is called 
the Museum proper. It contains birds, I believe, some insects, 
and also trophies, portraits, and relics of the heroes of the War 
of Independence. Here we see the banner with which Pizarro 
led on his handful of robbers to the plunder of Peru. 

One room in this vast pile I have tried in vain to enter. It 
is the chapel — capilla — used by the students, I believe, but an- 
ciently used for the preparation of those who are on the eve of 
execution. It has been a beneficent regulation of the Church 
that no man should be executed who had not passed the previ- 
ous night in a capilla. These capillas are generally recesses 
that occupy two sides of large churches, each of which has an 
altar of its own. One of these in Santo Domingo is fenced in 
with an iron railing, which seems to render it quite appropriate 
to such a use ; but this little church in San Bartolome* opens on 
no street whatever, but into an inner court only, so that escape 
to the distant world is hopeless. Here some of the purest pa- 
triots that ever lived spent their last hours before they were 
shot by the direction of the fierce and brutal Morillo. 



160 NEW GRANADA. 

But let ns leave this dismal old building, with its awful chap- 
el, ambitious, ill managed, and now suspended school, its Hall 
of Degrees, libraries, cabinet, museum — all locked, and its fa- 
natical church — always open. We proceed up the hill one step 
farther. Next above San Bartolome, and still on our right, is 
the Palace, a common-looking house, but with two or three sol- 
diers about the door, which fronts that of the libraries, cabinet, 
museum, and Hall of Degrees. Both open on a street running 
north and south. The basement corner of the palace near us 
is occupied by the palace porter, a man who has long held his 
place. You will note, as we go up the hill, that the windows 
of the principal story come nearer and nearer to the ground, till 
the last is not more than 7 or 8 feet high. Remember that win- 
dow : Bolivar saved his life by escaping from it. A few steps 
farther up, look at the left. Here you see a large building, sep- 
arated from the street by a high, stout fence. Is it not the ug- 
liest building in Bogota ? Well, that is the Theatre, where shop- 
men, clerks, and guarichas turn players on the nights of Sun- 
days and the other fiestas, when people have leisure to attend 
and they to perform. I have never been in, and can not say 
whether the interior corresponds to the exterior for beauty, but 
I see they care for ventilation, for there is an opening in the roof 
for the steam to escape, as in the roofs of kitchens. 

Returning down to the Plaza, let us keep on west. On our 
right, after passing the piazza of the Casa Consistorial, we come 
soon to a door guarded with a sentinel or two. It is the pro- 
vincial prison, an ill-regulated concern, not over clean ; but we 
must look into it by-and-by. On the left, and a little lower down, 
is a very large house, devoted to the offices of secretaries of state. 
The rooms are arranged around two patios, one behind the other. 
Occasionally a sentry is seen here, out of respect, I suppose, to 
the War-office. 

On our right, on the next block, is the nunnery of La Con- 
cepcion, that occupies two entire blocks of the heart of the city. 
The plan shows the east end to be built up, and the lower end 
left for a garden. It is a pity government had not found means 
of confiscating this fine property before severing the union of 
Church and state. One thing they can do yet : it is to open the 
street that ought to separate the vast, useless property into two 



CONVENTS AND MINT. 161 

blocks, when the lower one could not "be devoted to the pleas- 
ures of a few idle, frolicking nuns. And this leads me to speak 
of another thing : the walking past a nunnery is always worse 
than elsewhere, because they never have a decent sidewalk. 

And here, one block down, and opposite the garden of La Con- 
cepcion, is another nunnery, that of Santa Ines. Nunneries 
seem not to have their churches on the corners of streets, and, 
consequently, to have no " mercy doors ;" or, rather, as it is a 
side door that you enter, that may be the " mercy door," and the 
principal door may be theoretically one that leads from the body 
of the convent into the church opposite the principal altan 

Let us return to the northeast corner of the Plaza, at the Ca- 
thedral. Looking up the street past the " mercy door," you may 
see, some distance up, a sentinel before the door of the Mint. 
This block, and those of the Palace and Cathedral, are darkly 
shaded in the Plan. The Mint is a very creditable establish- 
ment, under the superintendence of the only survivor of the an- 
cient band of scientific men, most of whom were butchered by 
Morillo. Fortunately, Manuel Eestrepo never fell into his pow- 
er, and he still lives, the geographer of Antioquia, a historian 
of his country, the director of the Mint, and the very model of 
a gentleman. 

Now let us turn north from the American consulate. The 
whole block, of which it is the southeast corner, is the property 
of the convent of Santo Domingo — St. Dominic — the richest in 
New Granada. All the stores and shops on the four streets that 
surround it are theirs, and, as if these did not yield enough, the 
part on the street by which we came up, past the hospital of 
San Juan de Dios, is built up into regular houses of two stories, 
with small patios. Here, too, the church is in the middle of the 
block, but the " mercy door" opens into the street last named 
by a passage between two houses. 

Still farther north, we have the greatest stores of the capital 
on either hand, and its best walks beneath our feet, till we come 
to the bridge of San Francisco. One block lower down is the 
Bridge of Apes — Micos — then down, after the river turns south, 
is that of San Victorino, that we crossed first. There was once 
a fourth and upper bridge, but that has been carried away, and 
as it was not much needed, it has never been replaced. Ex- 

L 



162 NEW GRANADA. 

cept the Ape's Bridge and that at Honda, I know of no bridge 
in New Granada that is not of the most solid construction. All 
the wooden ones have rotted down centuries ago, and the flimsy 
stone ones, if ever there were such, have yielded to the force of 
earthquakes. 

Passing the Bridge of San Francisco, we have on our left the 
Convent of San Francisco, and opposite it, on the right, the 
Plaza of San Francisco, with its fountain. The block in the 
Plan on the south side of the square represents the barracks of 
San Francisco, and the little block in the northwest corner is 
the Humilladero, perhaps the smallest church in New Granada, 
and the oldest not only in Bogota, but in all the interior, dating, 
if I recollect aright, back to 1538. 

Now look down the next street, and you see a bridge running 
over the street from the convent of San Francisco to the oppo- 
site building, of which I have not learned the history, but as it 
is a place used for female devotions, it has been unjustly called 
a nunnery. Perhaps it is malice to call that bridge the Bridge 
of Sighs, though, unless designed for tender meetings and part- 
ings, it is difficult to say why it was there. The church in this 
next building is called La Tercera, or of the Third Order of 
St. Francis, the first order being the monks, the second the nuns 
of Santa Clara, and the third married and unmarried persons of 
either sex who are inclined to a stricter religious life than lay- 
men generally. On our right, opposite La Tercera, is a large 
and fashionable school of the widow of ex-President Santander. 
It is almost as strict as a convent. 

On the next block but one north, on the left, is an old con- 
vent (darkly shaded in the Plan), taken away from the Jesuits, 
and converted into a poor-house — hospicio — which was in a 
miserable condition when I saw it. To fit it for a foundling 
hospital, it was necessary to cut a small door in the wall next 
the street. Open the door wide, and you will pull a chain and 
ring a bell within. You see a wheel 30 inches in diameter, with 
an opening in it. If a babe be put in, a turn of the wheel will 
bring it into the presence of a porteress within. She can not see 
out, and the depositor may walk off. She will never know her 
child, nor her child her. Could any thing be more conven- 
ient ? The engraving on the opposite page, made probably from 



BARRIO DE LAS NIEVES. 



163 



description, gives the 
wheel of twice the true 
height, and omits the 
door. The artist has 
likewise taken the lib- 
erty of dressing the un- 
fortunate mother in Eu- 
ropean costume. 

Next you come to 
the parish church of 
Las Nieves — of Our 
Lady of the Snows — 
on your right, and a 
plazuela on the left, 
with a fountain. North 
of this the houses be- 
come sparse and mean, 
till they degenerate in- 
to huts. Then comes 
an open space with a 
muddy brook running 
through it. Across the 
brook is the little Fran- 
ciscan convent of San Diego, marked in the Plan with the letter 
c. I shall show you no more convents, although there are 
enough more, both for monks and nuns. Fortunately, quite a 
number of them are suppressed. 

From San Diego let us go west, and we soon enter upon the 
great plain again. Our road is bordered with deep ditches, the 
banks overgrown with bushes. This road leads past the ellip- 
tical Cemetery of Bogota (a), which we must visit again. Just 
before reaching it we come to a neat cottage, with a bridge across 
the ditch. Behind the house is a garden with abundant roses. 
At the end of the flowery path is the gate of the English Cem- 
etery (b). I copied and have lost the beautiful and appropriate 
inscriptions over the entrance in Latin and English. The 
grounds are overgrown with grass, and no walks are visible. 
In the centre stands the grave of a British minister. The mon- 
ument has been surrounded by an iron fence, but each bar of it 




THE FOUNDLING WHEEL. 



164 NEW GEANADA. 

has either been broken off or wrenched out of the stone and car- 
ried off. It is said the depredators climbed over the gate 
through the narrow space under the archway. 

Let us return to the Plazuela de San Victorino by the straight 
street running into it from the north. This street is called the 
Alameda, not because it is shaded with elms — alamos — but be- 
cause a favorite walk near Madrid was so adorned. A curious 
bush grows along the ditches here. It seems to have long, com- 
pound leaves like sumach, with small leaflets, among which, 
along the petiole, grow some pretty little Euphorbiate flowers. 
It is Phyllanthus, and the seeming petioles are branchlets, and 
the leaves are simple. 

Just before you reach the Plazuela of San Victorino, you find, 
on your right, what was once a Capuchin convent, but the church 
is now, since the Church of San Victorino went to ruins, the 
parish church of this barrio, and the rest of the building is put 
to a better use still. It is the Colegio de la Merced — the Pub- 
lic High School for girls of the province of Bogota. 

But now let us proceed down the river, past the Plaza and 
bridge, and we find an open spot on our right. It is the Plaza 
de los Martires — Square of the Martyrs. Formerly it was the 
Huerta de Jaimes — James's Garden. This Jaimes was prob- 
ably an early settler of Bogota, though his extraction may have 
been English. The irregular string of black spots on the Plan 
represent a line of mean cottages, that look as if occupied by 
squatters on the largest square in Bogota. The western wall 
of the square is a high garden fence, built, as usual, of rammed 
earth — tapias. The northern end seems to have been much 
acted on by the weather or some other cause. A few feet from 
this wall a bench is sometimes placed, and a man is seated on 
it. A file of soldiers is drawn up before him ; a priest steps 
away from him ; the command fuego ! — fire — is given, and the 
poor mangled victim falls in the agonies of death. 

The more humane, but more odious system of the garrote — 
strangling with a collar of iron — has been long since decreed by 
law, but the necessary mechanism has never been procured. It 
is, perhaps, the least objectionable mode of executing the last 
dreadful penalty of the law. The place where we stand is call- 
ed patibulo, and the seat itself banquillo 



PLAZA DE LOS MARTIRES. 165 

Here suffered Jose Caldas, Jose Lozano, Jose Maria Cabal, 
J. G. Gutierrez (Moreno), Manuel Ramon Torices, Antonio Ma- 
ria Palacio (Fajar), Count Casa- Valencia, Miguel Pombo, Fran- 
cisco Ulloa, and other eminent men, all martyrs to liberty — all 
worse than assassinated by that butcher, Morillo, for many, if 
not all of them, were shot in the back ! Pardon, reader, this 
long list, for the monument to their memory and to his undying 
infamy in the Plaza de los Martires has not yet been erected. 

It has been proposed to select another place for executions, 
and to retain the patriotic recollections of this unsullied in fu- 
ture ; but executions are so rare here that they never seem to 
anticipate another. 

Here ends our lesson on the geography of Bogota. 



CHAPTER XL 

FOREIGNERS IN BOGOTA. 



Legations in Bogota.— Our System. — Mr. King. — Mr. Green. — Mr. Bennet. — 
British and French Legations. — Venezuelan. — Legate of the Pope. — Spanish 
Obstinacy. — Granadan Courtesy. — Naturalization. 

It is but just, on entering a foreign city, to salute first the 
representatives of our national authority. An American can 
scarcely be said to have come in contact with his own national 
government till he* meets its representatives abroad; and here, 
so much of his comfort and respectability depend on their char- 
acter, that the traveler can not but feel acutely alive to the man- 
ner in which their trusts are discharged ; and, while it is the 
second duty of the writer to be grateful, his first is to be im- 
partial. 

Fortunately, I have nothing to do with any of the cases in 
which it has been said that blackguards and bullies have been 
sent abroad; for with, perhaps, the exception of President 
Pierce's commercial agent at St. Thomas, I have never met one 
that did not seem anxious to do all his duty, and as faithfully 
as possible. But it may be necessary, before testifying what I 
have seen, to make a few remarks on the American system of 
appointment of ministers. 



166 NEW GEANADA. 

Unless we can reform our system of removing and appointing 
officers, it is highly desirable that we abolish all embassies to 
the courts of civilized nations, and leave them to deal with us 
as they do with Morocco, Muscat, Burmah, and other barbari- 
ans, at our own capital. Under the present system, we must 
always have the poorest minister at every court. We must pay 
him for leaving his business at home, if he has any, with the 
probability that he will have to return home in four years or 
less, and generally with the intention of coming much sooner. 
You can not expect him to understand the language of the coun- 
try where he is, and still less the spirit of the government and 
the character of the men with whom he has to do. With other 
nations diplomacy is a profession, and no man expects to be min- 
ister who has not served a due apprenticeship as attache. 

The English and French ministers at Bogota were both mar- 
ried to South American ladies. Both are said to have used their 
posts for base purposes — one as a smuggler, and the other as a 
holder of a share in an enormous usurious claim that he urged 
to an unjust settlement. The English government had commit- 
ted the farther and inexcusable error of appointing a Catholic to 
represent them at a Catholic court. This ought never to be, 
for in half the cases where the traveler should need protection, 
the minister might deem it a sin to act. I know of no valid 
objection to a Catholic embassador to Sweden or Prussia, or a 
Mohammedan sent to Rome or Naples, but to send a Moham- 
medan to Constantinople, or a Catholic to Spain, would be 
worse than to leave the post vacant. 

It is a little curious that all our ministers to Bogota have been 
natives of the Southern States. To this there can be no objec- 
tion, as New Granada has abolished slavery, and an abolitionist 
would never need protection on account of his opinions. Mr. 
Yelverton P. King was a fine specimen of the Georgia gentle- 
man, having with him his wife, and a son as secretary of lega- 
tion. His hospitable board was spread for every respectable 
countryman, and the weary traveler would forget for a time that 
he was a stranger in a strange land ; and to the Christian, who 
felt that he had none elsewhere to sympathize with him, the fam- 
ily of Mr. King was a treat not soon to be forgotten. As a min- 
ister, however, Mr. King was of necessity incompetent, from in- 



AMERICAN DIPLOMATISTS. 167 

experience, ignorance of the Spanish language and of Granadan 
character, and he was too far advanced in life to begin. 

His successor was an entirely different man. Mr. Bang came 
to enjoy the novelty of an Andine life, Mr. James S. Green to 
indemnify himself for the losses that his practice had suffered 
from his devotion to politics. His plans were well laid for this. 
Leaving his family in Missouri, he came and took board in Bo- 
gota. Hospitality was no part of his plan, and, indeed, it would 
defeat it, and accordingly not even the 22d of February was al- 
lowed to make an exception. But as a minister, Mr. Green was 
at once able and faithful, and had he continued a few years at 
his post, there would be every prospect that he would become 
eminent in his profession ; but he did not stay long enough to 
speak the language even moderately, and before he could begin to 
act independently of the advice of his countrymen, he returned. 

But how do our affairs get on here amid all these changes ? 
The answer is clear. The consulate of Bogota does not pay its 
charges. No partisan could be rewarded with it ; it is neither 
a loaf nor a fish ; so it is left in the hands of Mr. John A. Ben- 
net, who came here as a photographer, and, by virtue of Yankee 
versatility, has become a merchant of established character and 
of much influence with the Bogotanos. I risk little in conjec- 
turing that no step has been taken by our ministers lately with- 
out his concurrence, and, as he is a safe adviser, and interested 
in the continuance of a good understanding between the two 
countries, all is likely to go well enough, whether the legation is 
vacant or filled. 

But is there no remedy for this state of things ? I see none 
so long as our foreign missions are or can be used as rewards 
for the friends of the President. I know of but one branch of 
national service that seems at all well managed, and that is the 
army. "Would it not be well to detach lieutenants of engineers 
and artillery for secretaries of legation, and appoint to the more 
important embassies the best officers of the army ? We need 
not fear a worse system than we now have, and, until some bet- 
ter system is adopted, nothing save a wholesome fear of our can- 
non can keep our embassadors from being the laughing-stock of 
veterans that have spent their days in this branch of their coun- 
try's service. 



168 NEW GEANADA. 

The legation of Venezuela happens now to be very well filled 
here, and the minister is, I understand, contracting a matrimo- 
nial alliance while negotiating on other matters that arise. The 
Pope had also a legate here at that time — a live cardinal, walking 
our streets in purple robes. But it appears by the Gaceta Oficial 
of 7th October, 1853, that Monsenor Lorenzo Barili has ceased 
from his functions. He officially protested against the law au- 
thorizing marriages without the consent of the clergy. The 
government could not recognize his heavenly functions after the 
30th August, nor his right to meddle with their local legislation. 
Government was ready to communicate with the representative 
of the sovereign of the States of the Church on any interna- 
tional matters that he might propose. Monsenor disdains ex- 
ercising merely earthly functions. Sefior Lleras desires to know 
at what time he will resign the immunities of an embassador, to 
which the cardinal distinctly replies that from that day forth he 
resigns them all. He has become an attache to the French le- 
gation. 

Spain has no representative in New Granada. It does not 
comport with the dignity of that proud weak power to acknowl- 
edge the independence of New Granada, and, in consequence, 
there is a practical non-intercourse between them. Had Britain 
been thus unwise toward her rebel colonies, what a valuable 
commerce must she have forgone by keeping her best market 
closed against her ! Very few natives of Spain (Chapetones) 
are now to be found in all New Granada. Indeed, they have al- 
most forgotten the very word Chapeton, and its counterpart Cri- 
ollo, which used to designate natives of the country. Besides 
the citizens of adjoining republics, the most numerous foreigners 
in this country are English, French, North Americans, Dutch, 
and Germans. Of our countrymen there are some half a dozen 
here generally, and all of them respectable citizens. The En- 
glish are more numerous, including some in the humbler walks 
of life. 

A few of the foreigners have become naturalized citizens of 
the country ; but, though naturalization is liberally encouraged, 
it is hardly an advisable step. To the great scandal of his Ho- 
liness, liberty of worship was long since conceded to the immi- 
grant. His domestic effects and tools pass duty free. He is 



NATUKALIZATION. 169 

allowed a plot* of land for himself, and one for each member of 
his family, to be selected from any public lands — tierras bal- 
dias — and I have even known government defend a long suit of 
ejectment against a naturalized citizen who claimed some land 
with cinchona on it. 

But the protection to the alien is such as to make him slow 
to covet the privileges of naturalization. He is now equally 
protected in his worship, and exempted farther from forced loans 
— the bane of a country liable to revolutions. He is sometimes 
permitted to hold office, but can not be compelled, while to the 
citizen there is no liability more to be dreaded ; for most minor 
offices have neither salary nor fees to reward them, while there 
is no escaping them but by a certificate of ill health, or by re- 
signing, and getting the resignation accepted. 

And the district officer is obliged to hold his office in the place 
designated as cabeza — head — of the district, and to be at it 
daily, often to the ruin of his private affairs. I have seen a 
man, therefore, earnestly beg of a doctor a certificate of ill 
health to escape being juez de distrito — parish judge ; and this 
responsible office has, in two instances in my knowledge, fallen 
to the lot of men who could not read ! 

Farther, while the laws for protecting the person are the same 
for aliens and citizens, in the execution of them a crime against 
an alien is apt to be more certainly and severely punished if the 
representatives of his nation are at all competent. So it is a 
privilege, with this liberal government, to be an alien. 

But, be the foreigner citizen or alien, the courtesy of govern- 
ment does not stop where his lawful claims end. The whole spirit 
of the government has always been liberal both to individuals 
and governments. There is the same difference between their 
dealings and common diplomacy as between the transactions of 
a merchant of the first class and the trader who professes to ask 
all that he can get. The Granadan government contemns the 
idea of overreaching or outwitting the party it deals with, or 
driving the closest possible bargain. The history of its deal- 
ings with the Panama Eailroad Company is full of instances of 
this ; and my own testimony is, that the foreigner is treated as 
a guest rather than a stranger by all classes of officers, from tide- 
waiters to the President. 



170 NEW GRANADA. 



CHAPTEE XII. 

THE BOGOTANOS. 

Houses. — Smoking. — Dinner at the Palace. — Coreographic Commission.— Low- 
er Orders. — Market and Marketing. — Lesson in Spanish. 

I CALLED on the day after my arrival at the house of a mer- 
chant there with a friend. We entered the zaguan of a casa 
baja, and advanced to the inner door, on which he struck one or 
two "blows with the palm of his hand. A brief dialogue ensued 
with a servant who came to a door on the other side of the pa- 
tio. It was"Quien?" "Yo." "Adelante"— "Who?" "I." 
"Forward." We pushed open the coarse, heavy square door. 
It resisted our push because of a stone hung to a peg over the 
door by a leather thong. The stone rises as the door opens, 
and its weight shuts the door as we release it. " Que entran 
por dentro" is the invitation to walk in. The sala is high and 
spacious, the floor is matted, and two or three cheap sofas ex- 
tend along the sides of the room. Instinctively you look 
around for books or papers, but you see neither. The win- 
dows are high, and are furnished with glazed sashes, that open 
inward with hinges. The walls, of unburnt brick — adobe — or 
of tapias, are two feet through. In the thickness of the wall is 
a step as high as a chair, by means of which you can mount 
and seat yourself in the jamb of the window. Two persons 
thus seated and two more standing make a snug party. All 
windows are protected with a reja or grate, and no reliance is 
placed on the sash for protection. 

The lady of the house came in, and we learned that the gen- 
tleman we wished to see was not in town. She ordered a ser- 
vant to bring fire — candela. It was a brand from the kitchen, 
or else a coal in a massive silver spoon, and with it she handed 
round cigars. I declined, saying that I do not know how to 
smoke — No se fumar. 

She and my friend went to smoking. She was of about the 
middle age, rather coarsely dressed, as I should say, and seem- 
ed uninteresting, rather from the want of intelligence than from 



LADIES OF BOGOTA. 171 

the lack of the elements of physical beauty. Her Hack-eyed 
daughter, whom I afterward saw rather by accident, as she was 
engaged with other company when I called, was scarce able to 
converse about things, and I cared little to converse about per- 
sons, so that, in spite of personal attractions, I tired of her as I 
would of a moving, speaking image. 

But how can we expect conversational powers without read- 
ing ? The young lady is, in fact, almost a prisoner. Her sole 
enjoyment and employment seems to be to seat herself in the 
window, and exchange salutations with those who pass. Should 
I ask her to take a walk with me, it could be little less than an 
insult. She can never go out but with her parents and broth- 
ers. In fact, she scarce ever enters the street except to go to 
church. Her school was a prison to her, her house is a prison, 
and what does she lose if she betake herself to a nunnery, as 
a prison from which she shall go no more out ? In fact, the 
nunnery receives no prisoners without a respectable dowry, and 
perhaps it secures her as much happiness as she might find in 
the married state. 

I did not see the young lady smoke, but I presume she does. 
Many assert that it is not disreputable for ladies to smoke ; but 
it is said that many smoke secretly, but not openly, so that there 
must be some discredit about it. As for the practice of smok- 
ing with the lighted end of the cigar in the mouth, which pre- 
vails in the Tierra Caliente among the women, I have never 
seen it here. It probably is economical of tobacco, as none of 
the smoke wastes its sweetness on the outer air till it has de- 
posited a part of its narcotic principle on the mucous membrane. 
Cigarillos, made by wrapping tobacco in paper, are rarely used ; 
the ladies smoke unmitigated cigars. 

The family may be safely said to live up to their means. I 
have thought that in New York there was a propensity to re- 
trench in necessaries and spend too much in show. That fail- 
ing is no less here. A former writer said that when Bogota was 
in its glory, it was the abode of much ostentatious hospitality ; 
but that since war and revolution have impoverished the nation, 
and the increased liberty of negroes and Indians have tended to 
the same result, there has been a retrenchment rather in the 
number than the splendor of their dinners. 



172 NEW GKANADA. 

The only dinner to which I was invited by the Bogotanos to 
whom I brought letters was at the Palace. It was styled a din- 
ner " en familia," and the hour was six. I went a little before 
the time. I passed unquestioned the sentinel at the porton, 
went through the zaguan and corredor till I reached the stairs. 
In the corredor of the second story an officer was in attendance. 
He conducted me to one of the parlors. I believe I have been 
in six or eight of these rooms at different times. Most of them 
are carpeted, and all of them are comfortably, not splendidly 
furnished. No one of the rooms would strike one as extraordi- 
nary in the house of a gentleman of ordinary wealth. The re- 
ceptions are all plain, and of due republican simplicity. At 
home the President appears like an ordinary citizen ; but in the 
streets, his body-guard of lancers distinguish the "Ciudadano 
Presidente" from all other ciudadanos — citizens. 

Both General Lopez and his successor, General Obando, are 
old soldiers, who have often risked their lives in battle, some- 
times for their country and sometimes against it. Both are dig- 
nified, soldierly men — Obando, perhaps, the more so, while, as 
a civil officer, I would form the higher opinion of Lopez. He 
appeared interested in the development of the resources of the 
country. La Seriora de Lopez appears as well for her age as 
any lady I have seen in Bogota, with one or two unusual excep- 
tions. La Senora de Obando seemed to me more domestic, per- 
haps more of a Granadino, but less elegant. 

At the meal there were in all about a dozen guests, but there 
was little about it characteristic of the country. I will mention 
only one dish : the short, thick, and reptile-looking fish of the 
Bogota. These were wrapped in letter-paper and baked, and 
placed on the table in their original packages. During dinner 
the military band played in the patio. 

On no family in Bogota did I call with more pleasure than 
that of Colonel Codazzi, who lives three streets above the Ca- 
thedral. The colonel is Italian, and his lady a Venezolana, but 
the younger of their numerous and intelligent children are Bo- 
gotanos. In their parlors I saw them sewing, and at their table 
there was so little of pretense, that when I have happened in 
after my own dinner and before the close of theirs, I have never 
been able to resist their invitations to sit down with them. 



COMISION COKEGRAFICA. 173 

Codazzi is the head of the Comision Coregrafica. His work 
on the geography of Venezuela, prepared and published at the 
expense of that government, is a model of geographical research. 
At the close of his duties there he undertook a similar task in 
New Granada, on which he has now been engaged some years. 
He has encountered incredible hardships, and at the present rate 
will in a few years have visited every part of the republic. He 
had then just returned from the provinces of Antioquia, Medel- 
lin, etc., having previously visited those north of the capital, not 
including those on the coast. He has since passed through the 
pestiferous region of Choco, the coast of Buenaventura, and the 
provinces of Popayan and Pasto, besides a visit to the Isthmus, 
in which he gave advice to the explorers for a canal route which 
it would have been well for them if they had taken. The last 
and worst thing I ever knew of him was, that he, as well as Col- 
onel Pineda, risked his precious life in putting down the revolu- 
tion of Melo. 

Codazzi is a man of the utmost enthusiasm, dauntless cour- 
age, and, I believe, a true friend. He has been accompanied at 
the charge of government by a number of assistants. The his- 
tory of his tour at the North was published by one of them, 
Manuel Ancisar. Another gentleman, who has accompanied 
him on all his trips, is Jose Maria Triana, a young and perse- 
vering botanist. It is impossible to secure such men as are de- 
sirable for such an undertaking, but government has done its 
best, and so has the commission. They take latitudes, longi- 
tudes, and altitudes, and make other observations as best they 
may. And thus they are struggling on, year after year, with 
horrible obstacles from thickets, precipices, and, on the Pacific 
coast, from venomous serpents and fevers. Honor and success 
to them. 

But let us take a look at the poorer classes. Why do so 
many of them live here ? Of the 30,000 inhabitants of Bogota, 
what a small portion have the means of comfortable subsistence ! 
But why are there more men in New York than ever can obtain 
employment there ? It is because vice is gregarious, and they 
would rather suffer for food than lose the excitement of the rab- 
ble. There are in Bogota many that know what hunger and 
scanty fare mean. Among them are a large proportion of fe- 



174 NEW GEANADA. 

males, occupying a position more like that of the grisettes of 
Paris, only the latter far excel the guarichas of Bogota in intel- 
ligence, wealth, comforts, attractiveness, and in morals. 

The guarichas furnish an ample supply of wet-nurses at a 
very reasonable price, only that when they have gained the af- 
fections of their charge they abuse their advantage, as the heart- 
less of that class are apt to do. Their own children are no ob- 
stacle, for, if they live, they can put them into the foundling 
wheel as soon as a good offer for their services occurs. Mar- 
garita treated some of her girls to a little recreation once. They 
went off to the Fucha to swim, taking with them the babe and 
wet-nurse, and also our two little girls, who are not old enough 
to learn any evil in such company. Well, there our ama de 
pechos saw her own babe and its father, and what else happen- 
ed my little friends did not tell me. Next day our babe was 
crying, and the mother calling out to the nurse, who made no 
answer. She cried worse, and La Seiiora, in a fury, ran to the 
rescue. She found the babe all alone, clinging to the valance 
of the bed, and unable to get down. The nurse had decamped, 
bag and baggage ! 

I called on my washerwoman one day. She lives in a tene- 
ment on the ground floor of a casa alta. Cold as is the weather 
in Bogota, the door is open to admit light, for she has no glass. 
To prevent the intrusion of prying eyes, a screen — mampara — 
is placed before the door. It is too high for a five-foot Indian 
to look over, and placed just so that we can run round it. The 
little room looks like a prison cell, only it has no grated win- 
dow, nor loop-hole, nor breathing-hole, except the open door. 
Within is an inner cell, smaller than the outer, with no door, and 
all its light and air comes from the outer door. A table, as large 
and as high as an ottoman, a low stool, the seat of which is 
made of two equal surfaces descending to the centre like a trough, 
two or three little earthen dishes, the poyo or immovable seat 
built around the walls, pieces of raw-hide or mat for beds, and 
the mampara, are all her furniture. The wash-tub ? It is the 
river. The ironing apparatus ? Another woman does the iron- 
ing. 

Where is her door leading into the patio? She has none, 
and can have none. A fine house would it be if any guaricha 



THE POORER CLASSES. 17£ 

that chose to rent this miserable tenement could come into the 
patio. But what can she do ? Where can she go ? for modern 
improvements are not dreamed of, and sewerage there is none. 
She has no rights outside these two little holes, except in the 
streets, vacant lots, and by the river side. Blame not, then, the 
poor peasant women by the river side : they keep the laws 
of decorum as far as is in their power ; and when you are sick- 
ened at the sight of filth in the street in a city 314 years old, 
washed by two rivers, and placed on a side hill to make drain- 
age as easy as possible, let it be a motive to urge upon the gobi- 
erno of the province some such radical measures as health and 
decency demand. 

The number of families living in this way exceed, perhaps, the 
number of well-living families in Bogota. The ground floor is 
often regarded as not so healthy as the first floor, so each house 
has but one respectable family that has access to the patios. 
The front room of these lairs, excavated, so to speak, in the 
foundations of the best houses (the Vice-president's among the 
rest), are often used as shops by shoemakers, tailors, saddlers, 
etc., some of whose implements even occupy part of the street, 
to the inconvenience of every passer-by. Here you see a game- 
cock anchored to a peg by a string that has a segment of cow's 
horn, of the size of a napkin-ring, forming a sort of swivel-link 
in the middle, that the prisoner may not twist his cord up into 
knots. The bird is out here at board : his owner might not 
wish such an ornament in his own patio. 

Bogota has a daily market in the Plaza of San Francisco. It 
is, however, small, and resorted to mainly to supply accidental 
deficiencies and unforeseen wants. The great market-day of 
Bogota is Friday, though the market really opens on Thursday 
in the principal plaza. On Friday the whole square is covered 
with sellers and their merchandise. They invade the steps of 
the Altozano, but the platform above is left free. The square 
is paved with cobble-stone, except two diagonal walks of flat 
stone, which are so arranged in some places as to form troughs 
to save the rain water to moisten the thirsty sole of some passer 
at night. One of them, near the northwest corner, almost de- 
serves a place on the map of the city ; and there are others in 
the city that I could avoid even now by my distant recollections 



176 NEW GEANADA. 

of repeated disasters. A person who designs stopping in Bo- 
gota should bring his lantern and a good pair of India-rubber 
shoes. 

But I was speaking of the market. "Wednesday, you remem- 
ber, is the market-day of Facatativa. Many things sold or un- 
sold there are transferred to the Plaza of Bogota on Thursday. 
Here there is a stream of sirup, panela, yellowish loaf-sugar, 
fruits, etc., flowing toward Bogota, along the great macadamized 
road, in bull-carts, and on the backs of men and beasts. Here an 
unfortunate descendant of the warlike Panches, that climbed up 
the steep height on Tuesday night, sat all day on Wednesday 
in the market of Facatativa, is taking his weary way, with his 
unsold back-load, twenty-eight miles more, and to-morrow he 
hopes to sell his load and start home. 

At Cuatro Esquinas he meets others directly up from La 
Mesa by Barro Blanco, chiefly with the products of the cane. 
Why is not rum, the bane of man, among them ? Because no 
man has a right to sell unimported spirits in this province that 
have not been distilled by Mr. Wills, and all his is brought from 
Cuni, and sold in his little shop near the Hospital. And from 
south and north, along the eastern edge of the plain, come other 
bands of marketers. Those mules from the north, entering the 
city near the Convent of San Diego, are loaded with moyas of 
salt, bought at the government store in Cipaquira at two dollars 
per hundred weight. The beef for the market is much of it kill- 
ed in the southern and meanest outskirts of the city. The ox 
spent the first three years of his life a bullock on the plains of 
Casanare, far to the east — three terrible years of alternate thirst 
and rain, of famine and flies. All this he survived, then the 
perils of the knife, then the journey through the mountains ; and 
he has hardly got wonted to this colder climate, when, having 
waxed fat with the first peace and plenty he has ever known, 
he is cut off in the midst of his years. A good piece of him will 
constitute an important ingredient of Margarita's puchero for 
Saturday. His head has fallen to the share of some guaricha 
or peasant, his skin is already stretched out on the ground and 
made fast by pegs, his blood is cooking in twenty ollas at this 
moment, and in six days more every digestible particle of him 
except the gall-bladder will have been subjected to the action of 



MARKET AT BOGOTA. 177 

the human stomach. How I hate carne menudo, as they call 
those parts of the animal that are not muscle. I could write 
feelingly, and give an especial philippic on mondongo — tripe — 
black pudding, and the udder of cows, only that it would make 
us all sick. 

But no roads to market are more thickly crowded than those 
which come down through the mountains east. What multi- 
tudes I have met on them at different times ! I meet them sin- 
gly and in groups, all females, or with some men in company, 
leading or driving a bull with a rope in his nose, or themselves 
loaded with the productions of their little fields or of their labors. 

And now, on Friday morning, let us go out and pass them in 
review. I have spent many patient and laborious hours with 
them, and even completed an enormous catalogue of their wares, 
which I was intending to weave into one of those easy metres 
so natural to Spanish and Italian, but, fortunately, perhaps, for 
the reader, I have lost the list. Nevertheless, to show you what 
I can do and what you have escaped, I will even give you a 
verse or two. I will take a favorite metre that they call Safico- 
adonigo, well known to Horace, and best illustrated by Can- 
ning's " Knife-grinder :" 

"Needy knife-grinder, whither art thou going? 
Rough is the road, thy wheel is out of order, 
Cold blows the wind, thy hat it hath a hole in't, 
So have thy breeches." 

This metre taught me the laws of Spanish prosody, and the 
accents will all come right without writing, except where orthog- 
raphy always places them. The pronunciation will be given 
at the head of the Glossary at the end of the volume. I must 
forewarn the beginner farther, that when one word ends with a 
vowel and the next begins with one, the two are counted as but 
one syllable, as o-ro|en pol-vo, and car-ne,e-ste-ras. Now here 
you have it : 

Papas, tinajas, peces, alpargates, 

Sal, cuentas, ocas, cueros, alfandoque, 

Piscos, marranos, oro en polvo, fresas, 
Losa y brevas. 

Huevos, cabuya, platanos, zarazas, 

Mucuras, patos, pinas, carne, esteras, 

Tunas, naranjas, azafran, frijoles, 
Cal y tasajo. 

M 



178 NEW GEANADA. 

There ! with some twenty-eight more verses like these we 
might perhaps have a tolerable enumeration of the articles most 
ordinarily sold in the market of Bogota, and as a reading-lesson 
for the future traveler in the Andes it would be very serviceable, 
though he might like a little more of the " dulce" mixed in with 
the "utile" in its composition. 

But we must enter the market in plain prose. We approach 
the Plaza from the plain at the northwest corner. Along up 
toward the Cathedral extend collections of sugar and salt, the 
moyas broken into various pieces. Wooden scales, and stones 
for weights, enable the seller to weigh the articles to his own 
satisfaction, perhaps to the entire satisfaction of the buyer. 

On our left hand, as we look toward Bolivar's statue, are 
some Indian productions, made of cotton, wool, and the fibre of 
a kind of century-plant yet to be mentioned. We advance to- 
ward the centre a rod or two, and turn up in front of the centre 
of the Cathedral. On our left are the sugar and salt aforesaid, 
on the right esculent roots and other vegetables ; hens in eel- 
pot cages, eggs tied two and two, earthenware, and fish. Here 
is a collection : a turkey tied by one leg to a peg driven into the 
pavement, a pig similarly moored, and a babe almost naked. 
Advancing, we find fruits on both hands, till you come near the 
Altozano, and turn south. Here you fall in with sellers of im- 
ported goods, cloths, and calicoes. There are one or two tents 
or boxes with a roof. The occupant of one, seeing me busy 
with my pencil, desires me to record that he has gold dust for 
sale, which I have done {vide supra). Here are cylinders of 
matting five inches wide ; those who sell it put it down and 
sew it. As we approach the south end we come to the meat de- 
partment, and turn down between meat and dry goods. Then 
on our right comes the green grocery again, till we approach the 
Casa de Portales, where are found cordage and native manufac- 
tures of wood, cotton, wool, and other fibres that we noticed on 
entering. The arrangement is not, however, systematic, but rath- 
er geographical, or that which is congenial to the sellers. Each 
locates herself among her friends, and sells whatever she has 
brought ; and here they remain, sitting or waiting all day. On 
Saturday morning you find the gallinozos scanning the whole 
field, and particularly where the meat was sold, leaving no sub- 



CHAFFEKING, 179 

stance unexamined. Lastly come the scavengers, a small squad 
of the presidio, under the guard of two soldiers. They sweep 
up the leaves that had served for wrapping-paper and all the 
rest of the refuse, and market is over. 

I went to market once for string, and, as I had had no other 
opportunity of making practical experiments, I made the most 
of this. The first time the price asked was more than I had 
been told to give. I accordingly went off without making my 
purchase, after having offered what I had been told was proper. 
One of the girls took the balls of string, and followed me all 
over the market, where I must have spent more than half an hour. 
It was some time before I discovered her, and she was not aware 
of my discovery. She seemed to wait for me to apply to anoth- 
er for the same article, but I did not, and at length left to go 
home. Still the poor indiacita followed me some rods beyond 
the Plaza, when, finding me really going, she offered her balls 
at the usual price, and received her pay. 

Overcharging strangers from richer nations is a fault of the 
mean and wicked every where. It vexes the traveler, who now 
submits, and now resists with more benefit to his successors 
than to himself ; but I think, on the whole, there is far less of 
it in New Granada than might reasonably be expected ; and if 
the market-people could only be made to husband their gains, 
one could not help loving them. But the tiendas where chicha 
is sold witness a great many sad scenes at the close of a mar- 
ket, and some of a disgusting character. Many reach home 
without a cuartillo of all their sales. Poor things ! they need 
to be taught economy, and to desire nobler and more lasting 
gratifications than any they now know. 



180 NEW GKANADA. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

RELIGION AND CHURCHES OP BOGOTA. 

Doctrines of the Romish Church. — Miraculous Birth of Christ, — Baptism. — Re- 
lation of God-parents. — Confirmation. — Communion. — Rosary and Crown. — 
Family Worship. — Vespers. — Neglect of Religion. 

Many intelligent persons are but little acquainted with the 
Romish religion. We propose to take a view of it as observers, 
not as theologians. It shall be by a candid statement of facts 
without comments, which here would be out of place ; and if 
the reader charge me with irreverence, my plea is that I find no 
reverence among the faithful here, and the less can therefore be 
expected in me. 

We wish to see some of the churches in the city of the Holy 
Faith, as certain devotees still call Bogota, although the name 
of Santafe seems to have departed with the last of the viceroys 
that here ruled the New Kingdom of Granada. It is well first 
to be indoctrinated into the holy faith itself. I shall treat it 
briefly, and as a historian rather than a polemic. 

The Romish Church — or the Church, as she styles herself, for 
she admits the existence of no other church — the holy Catholic 
Church professes not to teach, as many of her ignorant votaries 
believe, a salvation by mere ceremonies irrespective of any exer- 
cises of the heart ; and yet to this we must except the doctrine that 
no unbaptized person can escape hell ; while, save in some rare 
and dreadful case, no baptized person can go there. Baptism, the 
first and only absolutely essential sacrament of the seven, may be 
administered by a layman or a woman. It is accordingly often 
done, if the babe be weak, at once, by some intelligent person, but 
not with all the ceremonies. This is called "Echar agua" — to 
throw water. If the child lives, the priest performs all the other 
ceremonies of the sacrament with oil, salt, and spittle, with bell, 
book, and candle. The priest must have, when he applies the 
water, a mental or habitual intention to baptize, or the ceremony 
is void, and no future precautions, while this defect is not sus- 
pected and remedied, can save from hell. Priests have been 



BAPTISM.— CONFIKMATION. 181 

guilty of this awful crime from sheer deviltry. But if the priest 
be drunk or stupid, and have no intention at all, it is habitual 
intention, and is valid. A godfather and godmother — padrino 
and padrina or madrina — are required, to whom the babe is ahi- 
jado or ahijada, according to the sex. This relation — padrin- 
azgo — is a bar to matrimony, and a priest may have an ahijada 
in his house with as much propriety as a niece. The god- 
parents consider themselves bound in a sort of relationship to 
each other and to the parents, and for all the rest of life they 
call each other compadre and comadre. But when you find per- 
sons using these terms, you may not infer that there has been 
any baptism in the case, for these terms of endearment are often 
assumed by agreement between a gentleman and a lady. 

God has so ordered that, with a proper education, the children 
of Christians become Christians with a good degree of regular- 
ity. Now the profession that the child makes at birth through 
the god-parents, it is proper that he should make by himself 
when he comes to years of discretion. And who can judge bet- 
ter than the parents when that time has come ? The act is call- 
ed confirmation, and we might naturally expect it to be perform- 
ed at the age of from twelve to fifteen. But parents are rather 
apt to anticipate the age of discretion, and it has become quite 
common to confirm them about the time they begin to run alone. 
But the intervention of the bishop, or of some one with his pow- 
ers, is necessary to this operation. I never witnessed it but 
once, when the brother of ex-President Herran (now Archbish- 
op) confirmed a large number of children, some of them six or 
eight years old, and some unable to walk. There was nothing 
imposing in the ceremony. The bishop gives the child a pat 
on the cheek as a part of it. 

But the most important part of religious training is the prep- 
aration for the first communion. When the time comes — say 
at fourteen — the child is withdrawn for a time from school and 
from all gayety, and put under the care of a priest. A chaste 
and pious one, if such can be found, is to be preferred where the 
catechumen is a girl. Some content themselves with merely 
seeing that the child knows all the catechism, and can pray ; but 
one lady told me that her priest brought her so into the pres- 
ence of God that she never was the same person afterward as 



182 NEW GEANADA. 

before. She thinks this result would be more common if there 
were more good priests. This first communion is a great cere- 
mony, but it is not necessary to describe it. 

In doctrines they do not differ so greatly from other churches 
except as to the necessity of the sacraments to every comfortable 
escape from purgatory, and as to the existence of that doleful 
place fitted up expressly for Christians. They believe in the 
doctrine of the Trinity — the necessity of faith and repentance ; 
but there is another doctrine to which they attach an importance 
that seems to me a little extravagant. It is to the perpetual 
virginity of Mary. It seems to me a delicate point to discuss, 
and I may only hint that they infer from it that her body never 
bore any anatomical marks of maternity whatever. From this 
they infer the miraculous birth of Christ, which was, in their 
opinion, necessary to the virginity of the Virgin. Decency for- 
bids my quoting the words in which this doctrine is taught in 
the child's catechism. I will give, however, the conclusion — 
"just as a ray of light passes through glass without breaking 
or staining it." It is supposed that every person who does not 
believe this doctrine must be lost forever. 

They say that the Virgin revealed to some one in a vision, 
after her death, the peculiar terms on which she lived with her 
husband, but to whom, or when, or why, I have never learned. 
But when I argue that, if matrimony be a sacrament, it must 
have been a dreadful sin in her to prostitute it to the mere pur- 
pose of saving her character, and escaping punishment on a 
false charge of unchastity, they have no answer for me. 

The communion is swallowing a wafer, that, before consecra- 
tion, was like a common white wafer, but which has been, by the 
act of consecration, really converted into the body of Christ. 
This, the hostia, is received from the thumb and finger of the 
priest into the mouth, and never is touched with unconsecrated 
hands. The communion of the priest is the mass. As the 
communion must be taken fasting, it follows that masses can be 
said only in the morning, and that the same priest can say but 
one mass in a day. To this last there is one exception. On 
the 2d of September each priest is bound to say three masses 
before breakfast. The mass has already been described at 
length. 



METHOD OF PEAYING. 183 

Every Christian who is able is bound to hear mass every fes- 
tival : to stay away is quite a sin. The next most important 
religious exercise is the rosary. This is a series of prayers rep- 
resented by a string of beads of different sizes — cuentas. The 
company who are to be benefited by this exercise have one for 
their leader, who begins and says a prayer or two at the begin- 
ning, and then half of the Lord's Prayer, as is found in Luke. 
The rest say the other half. He says the first half of a Hail 
Mary — salve — and they the last half: so for nine more salves ; 
but at the end of the tenth they say a Gloria Patri, and the 
party that ends that begins immediately on the Lord's Prayer, 
and the leader finishes. They say that they have finished the 
first casa — house — and have begun the second. The leader, 
when he has finished the second Gloria Patri, begins the third 
Pater, and thus they change till they have finished five casas, 
or fifty salves. Then they say some other things, and among 
them the creed, which is their longest prayer. The corona has 
ten casas like those of the rosary. 

All families ought to pray the rosary at night, either at home 
or at church, but it is such a bore that men generally shirk out 
of it except on festivals. Some families pray only then, and a 
large majority not even then. The prayer-time at dusk is call- 
ed la oracion, and the prayers then held in the church visperas 
— vespers. The sound of the vesper-bell was the preconcerted 
signal of that dreadful massacre at Palermo known as the " Si- 
cilian Vespers." The visperas of any saint is the eve before 
his day, and even the whole day before. 

Persons who pray can not, of course, have their thoughts 
fixed on the words of the prayer, nor is that necessary ; but it 
is better to have them occupied with some profitable subject 
than in such thoughts as are apt to come to mind. Protestants 
would say that all the use of the rosary was to measure off the 
time to be spent in meditation, but I fear, should you teach this 
doctrine to the people, they would neither pray nor meditate 
much more. These prayers may be either in Spanish or Lat- 
in, and often, when a priest is leader, his half is in Latin and 
the rest in Spanish ; but the words of the mass must always 
be Latin. 

Two other ceremonies, or acts of devotion, that are first learn- 



184 NEW GKANADA. 

ed, are both known in English by the phrase "to cross one's 
self." Persignarse, derived from the Latin Per signum crucis, 
etc., is to say, in Spanish, "By the sign (touch your forehead) 
of the holy cross (touch your breast), deliver us (right shoulder) 
from our enemies (left shoulder). Amen." Santiaguarse is to 
make a cross in these four places, saying, " In the name of the 
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen." 

I have said nothing of confession. It is a rare practice, and 
I have never seen it but once, although I have been in Bogota 
at a time of year when the most confess. Few, indeed, of the 
more intelligent class ever confess, and, of course, these can not 
commune, neither do they fast. In fact, religion is in a great 
degree obsolete, especially with men. There is nothing to cap- 
tivate the senses, no splendor, no imposing spectacles in the 
richest of their churches. It is simply ridiculous, like a boy's 
training with sticks for guns. Only once did I see any thing 
that was an exception to this, and that was la resena, at the 
Cathedral ; of that in its place. I will farther add that, after an 
acquaintance of more than 20 months among all classes and in 
different sections, I have met but three persons that I have known 
to fast from my own observation : they were all females, and 
one was a little school-girl. 

Now, ladies and gentlemen, my lecture is over ; let us sally 
forth to church. But, my dear madam, if you would not get us 
all into trouble, take a little of my advice about your dress. And, 
first, lay off that European bonnet — gorra, as they incorrectly 
call it. You may go bareheaded, wear a gentleman's straw hat, 
or borrow a round-topped, broad-brimmed beaver of one of the 
antiquated Bogotana grandmammas. Now take your best black 
silk petticoat, and tie it on outside of all your other clothes for 
a saya. Never mind your gay corsage : that will be hidden by 
the mantellina — a large black silk shawl, bordered with black 
ribbon, worn over your shoulders. The mantellina and saya 
bring down the lady almost to the level of the Indian woman, 
for she only differs from you in wearing the same fashions in 
flannel, black or blue. No tawdry finery can enter the house 
of God ; there is no scope for display here. 



OLD CHURCHES. 185 



CHAPTER XIV. 

CHUECHES OP BOGOTA. I 

The City of Churches. — Clocks. — Advocaciones. — Las Nieves. — Bells. — Ara.> — 
Nude Saints. — La Tercera. — Flagellation. — San Francisco. — Santo Domingo. 
— Clerical Dress. — Cathedral. — San Agustin. — Nunneries. 

Bogota is pre-eminently the city of churches. With a pop- 
ulation of 29,649, it has little short of 30 churches, while Paris, 
with its million of souls, has hut about 50. Of the numerous 
churches there I have visited between 20 and 25, a feat that I 
doubt whether any other visitor has ever accomplished. But 
fear not that I will give the results of all this labor in detail. 
We must content ourselves with specimens that may give a gen- 
eral idea of them all, if such a thing is possible, where no two 
are more alike than the two most dissimilar churches in all the 
United States. 

There are no new churches here : I know not their dates, but 
judge that most, if not all of them, were built before the begin- 
ning of the last century. I wish to take you to a church that 
never has been a part of a convent. And now it occurs to me 
for the first time that all these churches without convents must 
be small churches, and comparatively poor ones ; so I must 
take the largest of them, Las Meves. Starting from the Alto- 
zano, on the upper side of the Plaza, we go north. In three 
blocks we come to the River San Francisco, and cross it by the 
Bridge of San Francisco. Before us, on the left, is an immense 
pile, the Convent of San Francisco, with its church door almost 
facing us. Look on the tower just before us. Do you see that 
town clock, with a face of the same shape, and of but little larger 
size than that of the old family clocks of the last generation ? 
Well, there are three town clocks in New Granada that I know 
of: that at Guaduas has two hands, and, I believe, strikes ; that 
at the Cathedral, behind us, strikes, but has no dial ; and this 
has one hand, and does not strike. 

We continue on past the little Humilladero, La Tercera, and 



186 NEW GRANADA. 

the Hospicio, and on the next block "but one, on the east side 
of the street, opposite a small vacant space, which is all the 
Plan shows of a plazuela and fountain, is the Church of Las 
Nieves. Our Lady of the Snows is, of course, the Virgin in one 
of her advocaciones, a word I can not understand nor translate. 
Take, as an instance of its use, Our Lady of Chiquinquira. 
This is a town, 82 miles north of Bogota, where, in 1586, a 
young girl was praying before an old, dilapidated, and much- 
abused picture of the Virgin in a kind of hovel. While gazing 
on it, it raised itself in the air, the gaping wounds in its canvas 
closed up, and it blazed out in new colors, and is now the most 
powerful in miracles of any picture or image in New Granada. 

So there is the Virgin of the Ledge (La Pena), of the Quere- 
mal, of Concepcion, of Dolores (sorrows), Socorro (help), etc., 
etc. Each of these has its own form of representation, which is 
never varied. These have other churches dedicated to them than 
that in which the original image was placed, and the character 
and abilities of these different Virgins are very different. I said 
different Virgins ; I should have said different advocations of the 
Virgin. A vow made to one is not payable to another. All 
these are used as names of females, as Concepcion, Dolores 
(masculine and plural, with adjectives in fern, sing.), Pilar, As- 
cencion, Nieves, etc., etc. But who Nieves is, or where and 
when she had her origin, I have not tried to ascertain. 

Now for the church. The facade, like all the others, is de- 
cidedly homely, as I count homeliness, though admirers of the 
Gothic may not agree with me. In the belfry are the bells, 
tier above tier, fewer and smaller successively, till at the apex 
is one of the size of a magnificent cow-bell. They are not hung 
as ours are, but a string is tied to the tongue of each, and they 
are pulled without the intervention of any machinery. Of course, 
the largest are small, for they have been brought from Honda 
by mule or by carguero. There is no tolling, no solemn peals, 
but a rang-a-tang-tang on all occasions, and as in all the city 
there must be over 100 of them (Steuart says 1000), they can 
make considerable noise. 

We enter, carefully taking off our hats as we cross the thresh- 
old, and the ladies covering their heads with their mantellinas. 
You are in a long room like a barn, open up to the top of the 



IMAGES AND PICTUKES. 187 

roof. Full in front of you stands the high altar, adorned with 
figures too numerous to describe. The one in the centre, the 
Virgin of the Snows, I suppose, is veiled with two curtains. 
When they are raised or lowered it is with great pomp and the 
ringing of a little bell. Of course, she is dressed with real 
clothes, and covered with tawdry finery, gilt paper, and ribbons ; 
or, in some cases, with massive gold, real diamonds, and par- 
ticularly emeralds. The face, too, must be painted and var- 
nished, and adorned with long hair, probably from the head of 
some guaricha. Light hair, rare here, is preferred. The niche 
before which these curtains hang to cover her is called the ca- 
marin. Directly under this is the sagrario, a little cupboard, in 
which a large hostia or wafer is kept constantly in a costly ap- 
paratus, the custodia, where it is visible between two watch crys- 
tals. In honor of this, a light is kept constantly burning in the 
church. Not all churches can afford a custodia, as their price 
varies from $112 (the cheapest I know) to $16,000, the most 
costly that are made except to order. One, once belonging to 
the Jesuits in Bogota, is said to have cost $60,000. The church- 
es that have no custodia can keep no hostia, and they have no 
light burning in them. 

Under this is a sort of shelf that contains, let into it, a con- 
secrated stone, the ara, about 18 inches square, and only over 
this can mass be said. On this shelf are placed the missal-frame, 
and other traps used at mass. 

All along down the sides are other altars, with their camarines 
and saints. It is quite desirable that there should be five at 
least. One of these is, in this instance, in a capilla, that pro- 
jects out beyond the walls on the left-hand side. This partic- 
ular chapel is remarkable for being used as a store-room for the 
twelve apostles, which are here all left to shiver in coarse shirts 
— all except the beloved disciple, who, in a very dilapidated 
robe, leans on the bosom of his Master in robes equally super- 
annuated. 

Directly over the door as we enter is the organ-loft. There 
are two pairs of bellows outside of the organ : it takes a stout 
man to blow them. Each is loaded with a heavy stone, and the 
man alternately lifts up the upper valve of each. The music is 
horrible. I may as well get through this at once by saying 



188 NEW GRANADA. 

that in all New Granada I have heard but one good or even de- 
cent singer, an Italian monk. Even he had never studied mu- ' 
sic. On extra occasions secular singers are hired as at a hall, 
but they are poor at that, and, but for the performers of the mil- 
itary band, poor indeed would be the music on the most urgent 
occasion. Rarely is it better than none. 

Often there are no seats in the church. In Bogota there are 
generally a series, placed end to end, running down from the 
high altar to near the door on each side of the central line ; so 
the occupants of the seats sit facing each other, 6 or 8 feet apart. 
The seats are occupied by men only : all females sit flat on the 
floor, or on a pellon carried by a servant. The pellon is a rug, 
like the finest that we lay at our doors for a mat, and is used 
for a bed, on the saddle, and for a seat in church. As the floor 
abounds in fleas, and creatures still more unclean are carried 
away from there — as all women spit on it, and as, in the uniform- 
ity of mantillas and sayas, it is difficult to find a friend or judge 
of a stranger, a crowded church is a disagreeable place for a lady. 
The men who do not get seats stand. No woman stands or 
sits on a bench, and no man sits on the floor. Only when they 
kneel are they all on a level. Now comes the signal for all to 
kneel : the little bell at the altar — the bells in the tower — the 
merriest strains of music, all mark the elevation of the hostia as 
the crisis of the mass. The women rise and the men sink, and 
all are together on their knees. This moment was once fixed 
upon by some assassins, one of whom was the officiating priest, 
to strike the fatal blow, that the victim might die adoring the 
hostia, and in the most favorable circumstances for salvation. 
The same motive seems to have guided another priest, who poi- 
soned his victim with the communion hostia. 

But we are tired of the church ; let us return. We will not 
try to enter the scanty Church of the Poor-house, once a Jesuit 
convent. It is rarely opened, or, rather, I never knew its front 
door to be unbarred. So we proceed on to La Tercera. La Ter- 
cera means The Third. There are three orders of St. Francis. 
The first is of Franciscan friars, the second of the nuns of San- 
ta Clara, and the third — Tercera Orden — is of men and wom- 
en, who may marry and hold property. To join it is to prom- 
ise an unusual strictness in religion, and you can, with more 



FLAGELLATION. 189 

propriety, "be buried in a friar's habit. The Tercera is hardly a 
Cofradia. This is an association paying a small sum statedly, 
like a burial society or benevolent association, for the sake of 
liberating each other's souls from Purgatory. These, in large 
places, often consist of men in the same line of business. 

La Tercera is a sombre church. It is remarkable as destitute 
of both paint and gilding ; but the carving is elaborate enough. 
I can hardly get a good idea of the use that is made of the con- 
vent which belongs to it, which is, you remember, joined to the 
Convent of San Francisco by a bridge. At stated times it is 
the theatre of Ejercicios. A company of women arrange about 
their board, and go in there, and are shut in. No one goes out, 
and no message comes in for nine days. Friends may die and 
they know nothing of it. To each is given a scourge (disciplina) 
and a cilicio — a contrivance made to press points of wire against 
the flesh. It looks like a flat chain, between one and two inch- 
es wide, made of small wire. The scourging is done in the dark, 
and each satisfies her own conscience. La Senora de Tal as- 
sures me that she has been through that mill, probably to ease 
her conscience after some great fault. Here I have frequently 
seen them praying in cross, as it is called, with their arms wide 
spread in the form of a cross, often displaying a large string of 
beads. 

But we will proceed back toward the Plaza. The Humilla- 
dero on our left, and La Vera Cruz — the True Cross — in the 
middle of the Convent of San Francisco, on our right, must be 
passed, because they are, as usual, locked. We enter the 
Church of San Francisco. I first visited it, I believe, on Saint 
Francis's day. Never was decoration so elaborate; and the 
church itself was meant to be rich : the walls are covered with 
carvings, and almost the whole interior of the church is gilded 
with ancient heavy red gold. The crowd was enormous, and 
the ceremonies, as usual, stupid. A great many new figures and 
pictures were brought out. The explanations of many of them 
were written with chalk or soap on looking-glasses ; and the 
number of these aids to reflection that are found among altar 
ornaments in New Granada is wonderful, but the most of them 
are cracked or otherwise damaged. I take one of these figures 
as an example. It was cut out of pasteboard, and painted, and 



190 NEW GBANADA. 

set up on edge. The looking-glass Ibelow said, " Saint Francis, 
in order to convince a heretic prince, shows the hostia to an ass, 
which immediately kneels." I saw the church lighted up at 
night with more candles than I ever before saw in one room. 
The monks were climbing like ants in little galleries high up 
the wall, now hugging a saint for support, now climbing in or 
out of port-holes. They were lighting candles wherever they 
could reach. Now down comes a blazing candle : take care of 
your shaven crowns below ! But, with all this blaze of can- 
dles, the church was darker (I noticed particularly) than our 
New York churches ordinarily are on a Sabbath evening. 

I went into the convent : it was the first I ever visited. You 
do not meet so good treatment here as with the Agustinians, 
but the pictures will pay a visit. They are usually covered 
with large screens hanging by hinges from the top : on this day 
these were all drawn up. The pictures are a series, illustrating 
the life of Saint Francis. I am not sure now whether it begins 
before or after his birth. They are large, say five feet by six, 
but of no artistic merit. The most interesting one to me is 
Saint Francis preaching to the fishes. His audience are thrust- 
ing their faces out of the water, not "with ears erect" indeed, but 
with their large eyes staring out of their heads, and their mouths 
agape with a wonderful expression of credulity. A stork near 
the saint's feet is poised demurely on one leg, one eye fastened 
on the preacher, while the opposite one may be stealthily esti- 
mating the weight of some beloved object in the audience. I 
confess it reminds me of some things which I have seen at 
church before. 

All these pictures are in the corredor of the principal patio. 
There are several other patios, some of them gardens that are 
absolutely uncultivated. I made some vain attempts to see 
the library. I fear they were ashamed to show it. I got, how- 
ever, a glimpse of the kitchen and its productions. The room 
is spacious enough for a hotel kitchen, but of the fare I should 
be a poor judge. My taste certainly differs from that of the 
sleek brethren. Monasticism is not dead yet: some of the 
monks are quite young. I made them several calls, but got 
very little more insight into their life than at first. 

We now recross the Bridge of San Francisco, and proceed 



JONVENT OF SANTO DOMINGO. 191 

along the Calle Eeal to the Church of Santo Domingo. Saint 
Dominic's name is not very fragrant in New Granada, and very- 
few children are named after him. In the Spanish of Robinson 
Crusoe, his man Friday bears the name of Dominic — Domin- 
go — which means Sunday. Still, this unpopular saint of the 
Inquisition has the richest convent of monks in Bogota. It 
owns all the block, and on two sides of it are the best business 
stands in the city. It had also, till recently, the right to the 
great gains of the church at Chiquinquira, to the curacy of 
which they appointed their oldest monk, knowing that he could 
not hold the fat office long. This church is said to be rich in 
fine paintings, but those that interested me most were a series 
of smaller paintings than those in San Francisco, illustrating 
the life of Saint Dominic. There is horrible spelling in the in- 
scriptions under them, b and v being inexplicably confused. One 
says, "God deliberating whether to send down war, plague, or 
famine to chastise the wickedness of men, Saint Dominic pre- 
vails on him to send, instead of either of them, the Inquisition." 

A second shows the saint arguing with a batch of female her- 
etics. Failing otherwise to convince them, he opens their eyes 
to behold the air over their heads filled with devils. Pity he 
ever had worse coadjutors in the work of conversion. 

Here, in a third, are all the monks in the first Dominican 
convent, with their books open, singing their matins at mid- 
night, when in comes the devil to stop them, and puts out all 
their lights. "What a to-do ! The day of friction matches is 
yet future ; smoking has not yet come into vogue ; the devil 
has had the audacity to extinguish even the light burning in 
honor of the hostia. Indeed, there may be no fire nearer than 
the distant kitchen, where monks are wont to keep a fire with 
the diligence of Vestals. Without a light they can not pray ; 
and if the Prince of Darkness invade the chapel in spite of light 
and prayer, what will he not do when he has annexed it to his 
own dominions and silenced the holy strains? Here was an 
emergency, and a saint equal to it. In the picture you behold 
the Saint of Fire and Fagot producing a flame from his own 
breast to relight the candles. 

Another shows us a dormitory where all the monks are on 
beds on the floor, sleeping, with their heads to the wall. The 



192 NEW GRANADA. 

Virgin has descended with a hisopo — a sprinkler, made of sil- 
ver, and shaped like the doubly conical sieve of a watering-pot. 
A female companion attends her, unconscious of any impropri- 
ety in the transaction, bearing a pot of holy water. She goes 
round the room, sprinkling and blessing all but one, who " loses 
the blessing because he is not sleeping decently." This un- 
lucky chap, instead of lying flat on his back, and straight, like 
all the others, has partly risen, and is watching the transaction 
— a fortunate circumstance, without which the world would have 
known nothing of it. 

The church itself is spacious and rich, though not so indis- 
criminate a use is made of gold as in San Francisco. The main 
altar is not at the end of the church, but leaves quite a comfort- 
able space behind it completely screened off. 

I at first mistook for uncolored lithograph a small painting 
that is said to be worth one or two thousand dollars. It is by 
Vasquez. Gregorio Vasquez (Ceballos) was born in Bogota, 
perhaps about the year 1700, and, if not the greatest painter 
that ever saw the New World, has, at least, been excelled by 
none that never saw the Old. The works of Vasquez are very 
numerous, and of quite unequal merit. Many of them have 
been carried abroad, and many others are lost or ruined, or near- 
ly so, by neglect. In some, the very canvas is pierced with 
holes to attach jewels, lace, or muslin. The picture of which I 
speak is not a fair specimen of his powers of coloring, nor can it 
be fairly criticised, as it is covered with glass. It is a mere fe- 
male head, of the size of life, on the door of the sagrario, I be- 
lieve, of the last and favorite altar on the left hand. 

Perhaps we ought to notice the dress of the Dominicans be- 
fore leaving. I premise that all the priests here wear robes 
reaching to their feet, with or without pantaloons, just as they 
please. The hats of the clergy have an enormous brim, and 
rolled up at the sides, and are so large that they pay $1 60 
duty, while a layman's hat pays but eighty cents. 

The reverend character to which I here introduce my reader 
is not a priest, but an eminent statesman, and, as these lines go 
to press, a candidate for the presidency. JSTo other man did 
more to bring about the Revolution of 1851 than Mariano Os- 
pina ; but when the government wished suitably to recompense 



CLEEICAL DKESS. 



193 




HABIT OF THE JESUITS. 



liis services, he was no- 
where to he found. His 
modesty led him to shrink 
from the public gaze, and, 
when he would change his 
quarters one night, the 
keen eye of some friend 
who was very anxious to 
meet him recognized him 
in the habit of the Order 
^ of Jesuits, his big rosary 
»; hanging down, so conven- 
if§R< ient if he should happen to 
|B||' V want to pray. As a sub- 
K stitute for street lamps, 
|p, he carries the inseparable 
** companion of a Bogotano's 
night excursions. So here 
we have Don Mariano, ta- 
ken from a grave Granadan caricature, to serve us as a model 
of the dress of regulars or monks. That of the Dominicans — 
rivals to the Jesuits in our hate — consists of a white flan- 
nel habit under a black one. Each order has its peculiar 
habitos. 

The dress of the seculars — priests that are not monks — is 
radically different from the regulars. They wear no habitos. 
Their innermost visible dress is short, and has sleeves : it is 
called chaqueta. Over this comes the sotana, without sleeves, 
extending down to the heels like female dress, only scanty, not 
containing more than three breadths, as the ladies say. Over 
this, in all weathers, they wear a cloak — manteo — with or with- 
out a hood. The dress is alike ungraceful and inconvenient. 

Before leaving Santo Domingo, look at that lady dressed in 
white flannel. She is called a Beata — a blessed one. She is 
a devotee that confesses daily, takes a sort of pastoral oversight 
of every family in which she can get a footing, aids some favor- 
ite priest in getting masses to say, and, in a word, is a profes- 
sional busy-body. Beatas are represented in a Bogota paper to 
be rarely handsome or young, mostly married, and a nuisance 

N 



194 NEW GRANADA. 

generally in every house Ibut their own, a place they do not in- 
fest much. 

We now proceed to the Cathedral. It is an old building, 
having been founded 15th of March, 1572. It is said to be the 
design of a native artist, and, to judge of his Work, we must 
know his limiting circumstances. What the building lacks in 
point of proportion is height. The proposition of the German 
householder in New York, that " ground is cheap up in the air," 
may not always be true in a country subject to earthquakes. 
Let us suppose, then, that he dared not add the other ten or 
twenty feet that the building needs : he must disguise the defi- 
ciency. In the facade, the altozono does this to a considerable 
extent, and, to make up the rest, the towers were run up even 
too high for their strength, as it seems, for they now bear in 
their upper works the marks of the great earthquake. But 
why not diminish the area down to due proportions? This 
would not do, for the room was really wanted for processions, 
and to hold the immense crowds that must get in, even though 
they can not see. 

Now, as you enter, you find right before you an immense 
box, so to speak, some twenty feet high, thirty feet square, and 
open at the top. This is called the coro — choir. The walls on 
three sides are four feet thick ; and the other side, toward the 
altar, is an open grating of iron. In the thickness of the wall 
is a spiral staircase, and on top are two organs, and space for 
hired musicians and hired male singers. 

The institution within this box is a mystery to me. The 
'personnel of it seems to be a dozen or so of a higher class of 
priests, called canonigos, a word that I believe is translated 
prebendaries, and a few boys — minoristas — dressed in red flan- 
nel, and some kind of white girl-clothes of cotton or linen reach- 
ing down to the waist. You may find this concern in full blast 
every Sunday at about 3 P.M. ; but, after watching them care- 
fully, you may not know more about them than what I now tell 
you. Each has his own seat, partitioned off from the rest by 
arms, as in the Fulton ferry-boats, and the seat rises on hinges. 
These seats may have been, in English, stalls, and to take pos- 
session of them, to be installed. The seats run around three 
sides of the room, and in two rows, one above the other. The 



CATHEDRAL. 195 

centre stall in the upper row was always vacant. This, I sup- 
pose, belonged to Archbishop Mosquera, as the one on the right 
of it was occupied by Dr. Herran, then the Provisor, and now 
Archbishop. I conjecture that the service has degenerated down 
from singing, as they were reading aloud in a drawling manner,' 
now one at a time and now all together, but always unintelligi- 
bly, in which respect they resemble some of the able choristers 
of the North. 

My mind runs back to my theory. I imagine that, when a 
coro was first built, it was filled with the sweetest male singers 
that could be found in the land, regardless of expense, that it 
might be a model of sacred music to the whole people, and a joy 
to all those who could treat themselves to a visit to the Cathe- 
dral. If that be true, never was there a case of more complete 
perversion of original designs. If I might doubt my senses, and 
think that the horrible din was to holier ears delightful music, 
still the fact remains that I have never seen an audience of even 
one beside myself. And yet this establishment cost the prov- 
ince of Mariquita $1148 80 annually for the salaries of the chap- 
ter, as these canonigos are called, or $1669, including all their 
share of the expenses of the Cathedral. And the nearest point 
of the province is more than two days' journey from the Ca- 
thedral ! 

A man showed me a picture, hanging on the side of the choir, 
that he considered miraculous, or nearly so. " You see that 
horse," says he. " Now stand full in front of him, then to the 
left, then to the right, and the horse's head will follow you as 
you go." 

"Do I understand you, then," said I, "that you should ex- 
pect to get so far round to the right as to see the left side of 
the head and neck ?" 

" Como no ?"— " Why not ?" 

" "Well, I should regard it as a decided miracle if you could 
get so far round as to see the side of the head the artist had not 
painted, or cease to see the side that he had painted." 

"Quien sabe, seiior?" 

Once in front of the choir you see more of the building. Yast 
and lofty pillars, with gilded capitals, support the roof. Projec- 
tions inward from the side walls furnish a large number of al- 



196 NEW GKANADA. 

coves or chapels, each with its altar, and confessionals are scat- 
tered around with a profusion that seems to imply that once 
they were more demanded than in these degenerate times. In 
fact, the whole establishment, if worked one day to the utmost, 
must be capable of delivering a small army from Purgatory ; 
but it is mostly locked, and, when opened, is generally as quiet 
as a Saratoga hotel in February. 

The space from the steps of the choir to those of the high al- 
tar is more liberally seated than in any other church. Here 
alone are several seats, one behind another, provided for the 
" Seminario conciliar," theological school, as inscriptions indi- 
cate, besides the line of seats running up the centre. The great 
altar itself is a detached lofty pile, rising far toward the roof, 
and helping to mask the vast extent of the Cathedral. To one 
of the pillars, between the choir and the altar, is the pulpit, ex- 
quisitely carved and gilded. It has a sounding-board over it, 
of the antique New England pattern. 

Behind the altar is still a very considerable space, enough for 
a small church. The immense area of the Cathedral is thus 
broken up, so that at no point can the eye measure it. And so 
far is it from the possibility of a united audience, so many the 
obstructions that cut off the view, that I knew of one case 
where a young couple, under the influence of a waltz played 
by the hired musicians on the top of the choir, during the serv- 
ices of an evening in Holy Week yielded to the temptation and 
danced. 

Between two sacristias of vast proportions is yet another 
chapel of considerable pretensions to beauty. The contents of 
the sacristias must be costly, although, as a church, the Cathe- 
dral is poor — quite poor compared with Santo Domingo. But so 
many performers must dress in these green-rooms with a great 
variety of habits (and these paramentos, as well as the orna- 
mentos of the altar, must vary in color according to the day), 
that the number and cost of them must be very great. 

Now let us go to the church that I like best, San Agustin, 
and it shall be the last. We keep along south in the same street 
in which we have been all this chapter, till we cross the Bridge 
of San Agustin. On our right now lies a ragged place, like a 
fractional vacant lot, called the Plazuela of San Agustin, and 



AGUSTINIAN CONVENT. 197 

on this fronts the convent. I once heard here some really toler- 
able singing, and tried to get in, but all the doors were locked. 
I have often visited it since, always disappointed in the music, 
but otherwise pleased. 

The high altar, like that of the Cathedral, stands clear, so 
that processions can march all round it. But you must not im- 
agine there is any dignity or splendor in these processions. A 
part of this consists of six poles, always held awry, to the tops 
of which is attached a piece of silk as large as the cover of a 
Rockaway wagon, but no attempts are made to keep it stretched 
out smooth. Under this walks a priest with the custodia, and 
as the procession marches round, all the kneeling multitude turn 
round toward it like sunflowers, so that when the procession 
has performed a revolution round the altar, they have revolved 
once around their axes. I was complimented here once with the 
offer of the first candle in a procession, a candle a yard long, but 
I felt constrained to decline the honor. I was struck in seeing a 
monk, at the close of that procession, extinguish his light by put- 
ting the lighted wick against the pavement, exactly as we see it 
in allegorical pictures. 

There are here two or three capillas quite removed from the 
body of the church, one of which would make a nice little church 
by itself, only that its principal door comes out of the main 
church. 

I wish to call your attention to two pictures here, which have 
interested me more than any others in Bogota, not so much on 
account of the superiority of the execution as the design. In 
one, on the back of the high altar, our Savior awaits the prep- 
aration of his cross. He has been maltreated terribly, and from 
his side a large piece of skin is gone, laying bare the ribs. An 
executioner, having occasion to use both hands, holds a large 
spike in his teeth : he is stooping down, and looks up at you, 
and the want of two teeth from the vigorous set he shows gives 
him an air of ferocity that makes you shudder. The only oth- 
er figure is the Virgin, overwhelmed with grief, but much young- 
er than her son. But the cross itself interests me. It is not a 
new one, but an old thing, once handsome, painted green, but 
cracked by the sun, bruised by rough usage, and polluted with 
the stains of numerous executions. 



198 NEW GRANADA. 

The other picture is on the right-hand side of the altar, and 
is interesting from the subject — the marriage of Joseph and Mary. 
Joseph, contrary to the practice of Italian artists, is young, does 
not look like having had children by a previous marriage, nor 
on the verge of imbecility. The Virgin here, as every where, 
is always young. I know not whether the Church claims per- 
petual youth for her, but certain it is that if any painter dared 
to make her decrepit and wrinkled in her last days, the Inquisi- 
tion would burn him, if it could. 

I have found considerable courtesy in this convent, and would 
prefer a visit here to any other. Luther was an Agustinian. 
But I have not time to take you over the convent. On the next 
block south, on the left hand, is the parish church of Santa Bar- 
bara, who is always represented as in the act of having her 
throat cut. The church is quite small, but has a picture of 
great reputation for efficacy. All these nine churches and con- 
vents are on one street, and there stand two more at its two ex- 
tremities at the edge of the city — the Convent of San Diego at 
the north, and Las Cruzes at the south. 

We will visit but the chapel of a single nunnery. I have 
never tried to get into the interior of any of them. I should 
have no difficulty in getting permission, but I should not have 
found enough of interest to pay. We will, for variety's sake, 
turn one block down the San Agustin, cross on a log, and go 
toward the lower side of the Plaza. The first building on our 
left as we go south is the Quartel — .barracks — of San Agustin. 
On the next block, on the left, is quite a good front to a public 
boy's school. I was passing here one Sabbath, and, finding 
there were boys in there, I hoped to find a Sabbath-school. Vain 
hope ! it was only a rehearsal of an examination that was soon 
to come off. On the corner of the next block, on the right, stands 
the Observatory. Now the spacious, never-to-be-finished cap- 
itol is on our right for a whole block, and we come to the Plaza 
at the corner diagonally opposite the Cathedral. We turn down 
west, having on our right first the Casa Consistorial, then the 
prison opposite the cabinet offices, and then the next two blocks 
on our right are devoted to the immense convent of La Concep- 
cion, which occupies two blocks in the heart of the city. 

A bird's-eye view of Bogota would surprise you with the num- 



NUNNERIES OE BOGOTA. 199 

ber of churches and the size of the convents. Many of the con- 
vents have already been taken from the Church, and convert- 
ed to some purpose more useful to the descendants of those 
whose money built them, such as schools, hospitals, etc., but 
the space occupied by the remainder is enormous, and they are 
said to own about half the real estate of Bogota. 

The number of monks and nuns can not be great, for, in the 
32 Granadan convents there are but 697 persons, exclusive of 
469 servants and 97 pupils. All of these could find space 
enough in a single convent of this city. Jolly times they must 
have had of it till Archbishop Mosquera took away the nuns' 
horses, abolished their theatres, forbade their masquerading in 
male attire, and allowed even to the aged and infirm but two 
servants each. Even now their sufferings can not be excessive, 
for in Santa Ines there are 73 servants and but 46 other in- 
mates. Nuns are never suffered to leave their convents, nor 
have I ever heard of any recent charges of their violating their 
vows. 

In the middle of the wall of La Concepcion, on the right hand, 
begins that of Santa Ines on the left. This was the first church 
in Bogota that I entered. It was Sunday, and I had Don Fu- 
lano's little boy for a guide. Amid all the other profanations 
of the Sabbath around me, I was not surprised to hear a hand- 
organ, and instinctively looked round for the monkey. I had 
forgotten where I was. The hand-organ proved to be a church 
organ, and the accompaniment was mass in a nunnery. But the 
singing was horrible. In no other nunnery is there any choir, 
and here the music is all by nuns, who only can learn of each 
other, and have little motive to learn. It was as bad as the 
fighting of cats. 

Two stories of the nunnery are grated off from the body of 
the church. The lower part of the church has two gratings of 
iron, four feet apart, extending all across the end opposite the 
altar. Behind the gratings is a curtain. Above is a grating of 
broad slats of wood, along all the one side and the end of the 
church. Not much can be seen of those within. 

The walls of the church of Santa Ines are covered with a se- 
ries of pictures, representing scenes from her life, in all of which 
she is accompanied by a lamb that seems never to grow bigger. 



200 NE W GRANADA. 

In the first picture the lamb is looking on to see the future saint 
take that first washing which we of the coarser sex seldom are 
permitted to witness. A maid is carrying something to drink 
in a tea-cup (set, as always here, on a plate instead of a saucer) 
to the newly-delivered. She is lying in a sort of berth or bunk 
— cuja — quite inappropriate, professional men think, to her situ- 
ation. 

The sacristy is to appearance in the body of the convent, but 
it is supposed to have no other door than that which leads into 
the church. A confessional, placed so that the priest's right ear 
is close by a perforated tin plate in the wall, is a necessary part 
of the furniture of a convent. 

The sacristan of a convent is sometimes, if not always, a man. 
I have seen the keys of the outer door drawn up into an upper 
window of the convent after closing at night, as if thus to show 
that all communication with the world was cut off. 

Now this is all I know about nunneries. Farther investiga- 
tions pay neither for making nor reciting. There is little or no 
beauty about them. Youth and intelligence must be very scarce 
in institutions so obsolete, now happily verging to extinction. 



CHAPTER XV. 

PARAMO AND POLITICS. 



Dancing. — Mules, Bulls, and Horses. — Quesada, the Conqueror. — Bolivar and 
Santander. — Colombia : its Rise, History, and Disruption. — One or two Re- 
bellions. — Heroic and frail "Woman. — Hail. 

And now you must be tired of churches. I have been for 
these long months. I will defer to another time the remainder 
of the tedious details of dull ceremonies, which must not, how- 
ever, be omitted in a faithful picture of a country in which they 
were once regarded as of the highest importance. Let us rusti- 
cate a while, and take a series of trips around the capital. 

Bogota, being situated at the western foot of a mountain range, 
is half surrounded with mountain and half with plain. My vis- 
its have chiefly been to the mountains. I will take these up in 
the order of the points visited, beginning at the north. I take 



DEMOCRATIC DANCE. 201 

first, then, the expedition of December 1st, 1852 — the longest, 
the most disagreeable and unprofitable of them all. I wished 
to see a paramo — a region too cold, for cultivation. I set out 
very early in the morning, mounted on a fine horse, kindly lent 
me by our minister, Mr. King, and accompanied by Dr. Hoyos 
and Senor Triana, of the Chorographic Commission. We went 
along the Alameda, which, after passing San Diego (c), becomes 
merely a macadamized road, leading toward the salt-mines of 
Cipaquira, the emerald-mines of Muzo, and, more than all, to- 
ward the fane of the miraculous and miracle-working picture 
of Chiquinquira. 

We leave this convent a little to the right, and the two cem- 
eteries twice as far to the left, and the road bends slightly to 
the west. Next we cross a brisk little stream — the Rio Arzo- 
pispo — and soon come to a collection of houses, called Chapine- 
ro. Just beyond, I picked some flowers from a black cherry- 
tree — Cerasus Capollin — so like our own native black cherry 
that I should not know but by comparison that it is not C. 
Virginiana. As I have never seen it except on road-sides just 
out of Bogota, it may well be an introduced tree, and, for the 
same reason, I have never been able to judge of its fruit. It is 
here called cerezo. This and a willow — sance, Salix — are the 
only trees growing, even by cultivation, on the plain of Bogota, 
or near the city on the mountains. 

On the left is a hacienda, to which, at a later period, I walk- 
ed with Mr. Green, to see something of a political festival to 
celebrate the accession of the Liberals to power on the famous 
7th of March, 1849. We staid but a short time, and left before 
the affair was fully under way, as our worthy representative 
soon tired of the affair. We saw some dancing worth notice. 
In a small room near the entrance there was a fiddle or clarinet 
playing, in anticipation of the military band yet to arrive. 
Two or three females, not of the highest class, were present, 
and ten times as many of their peers of the other sex. Two of 
them stood up to waltz. In two minutes a second man stepped 
in and took the place of the first, without breaking the time. A 
third and a fourth succeeded, till, the girl becoming tired, her 
place was supplied by another in the same way. How long the 
waltz lasted uninterrupted I can not say, as we came off. If 



202 NEW GRANADA. 

the musicians had relieved each other in the same way, there is 
no saying when the time would have varied or the step ceased. 
In nothing is the Granadino more indefatigable than in dancing, 
either by night, or, as in this instance, by day. 

A few miles farther on we turned off to the right, and took 
leave of the road, the second in New Granada, though a little 
out of repair. Keeping closer to the base of the mountain, at 
length we climb it. This, like chopping off a man's head, can 
be said in three words, but the performance is no trifling mat- 
ter. We were mounted on horses unused to climbing. On 
our way up we were overtaken by a loaded bull from Bogota. 
We were amused to see how little he made of climbing where 
our fine animals were put to their utmost. For the very worst 
of roads they are surer of foot than a mule, but can not super- 
sede them on any other. Mules are quicker, and will, I think, 
carry a much heavier load. A mule costs much more than a 
horse. They are surer of foot, but I suspect they can not en- 
dure more. The fact is, that the mule will not let you abuse 
him as a horse will. A horse, to escape the lash or the spur, 
will exert himself till he will never see another day of health ; 
but when the mule can do no more without injury to his con- 
stitution, he is as conscientious as a politician : urge him as you 
will, he will do no violence to that sacred trust. Hence mules 
are a semi-barbarous institution, as cargueros are a barbarous 
one; and as cargueros have successfully opposed the opening 
of mule-roads in some instances, so the Spanish institution of 
mules has opposed itself to wheel-roads, and in one instance, in 
the mother country, even to the opening of a railroad when 
completed ! 

The bull left us, but we were rising rapidly. How the vast 
plain stretched itself out beneath us ! Sheets of water covered 
as much of it as at any time of the year, for the rainy season 
was nearly past. Off against us stood Funza, said to have been 
the capital of the Muiscas, the most powerful nation in New 
Granada, when, in March, 1537, the indefatigable Gonzalo Ji- 
menes de Quesada, whose name for heroism should stand with 
those of Cortes and Pizarro, and for moral worth (small praise) 
above them both, first saw this plain. He had left Santa Mar- 
ta nearly a year before with more than 800 men. After strug- 



THE PAEAMO. 203 

gling with the wilderness, storms, starvation, and disease for 
more than 9 months, he had risen from the banks of the Opon 
with only 170 men left. These had brought with them (in some 
places literally carried bodily !) 62 horses ; and with these he 
made his way to this vast plain beneath us, conquered the Muis- 
cas, and other Chihcha nations, without receiving any re-enforce- 
ments. Quesada survived the various dangers of wars, conspir- 
acies, and law, and died of leprosy in Mariquita, beyond Honda, 
10th February, 1579, at the advanced age of nearly 80. 

We rise higher, and vegetation is ever changing. Here I no- 
ticed for the first time a peculiar and beautiful shrub of the Til- 
iate order, the Vallea stipularis, with its copious pink blossoms 
and pretty leaves, larger and thinner than shrubs at this alti- 
tude often indulge in, not unlike those of the poplar. A still 
more beautiful Ericate shrub, the Befaria resinosa, bears here the 
name of pega-pega, from its sticky blossoms, an inch long, grow- 
ing in dense clusters, of a rich rose-color of all shades, from the 
deepest to the most delicate. Here only did I find them with 
so little varnish as to be readily detached from the paper in 
drying. 

At length we ceased to ascend. At the top we found a hilly 
country rather than a plain, and on a distant hill saw a tree. 
We descended to a hacienda, consisting of three mud cottages. 
The largest was in the form of two sides of a square, and had 
three habitable but very small rooms, apparently for the occu- 
pancy of one man, not very nice, but, judging from his chapel, 
particularly pious. 

The other houses were at a little distance, and were a house 
for a dependant, and a kitchen. From the gentleman's bed-room 
a bell-pull extends to the other house, a contrivance almost un- 
known in this country — the first bell I have seen, in fact, large 
or small, except those in churches. We left our horses in one 
of the vacant rooms, and sallied out for plants. We were soon 
driven in by a storm, for the paramo had got angry, as they 
say here. 

We were kept wet and cold a long time at the house, while 
they were preparing some chocolate for us at the kitchen, on the 
strength of a friendship between the proprietor and Dr. Hoyos. 
I walked up and down two of the rooms to gain heat. It was 



204 NEW GKANADA. 

actually hailing without, the nearest approximation to snow ever 
ventured on here. 

Dr. Hoyos and Triana are on opposite sides in politics, and 
we may as well listen to them a little. I kept no notes, hut if 
I have exaggerated any the opinions of the Liberales, as they 
fell from the enthusiastic young botanist in employ of govern- 
ment, it must be under the influence of the still more enthusiastic 
young poet and jefe politico of Ambalema, Jose Maria Samper 
(Agudelo), whose " Apuntamientos" is the fairest specimen of 
republicanism "run into the ground" I ever saw. 

As for the pious Dr. Hoyos, once an attendant on the pious 
and eminent priest and botanist, Miitis, his sentiments repre- 
sent those of the few pious men of the nation, the extreme right 
of the Conservadores. As Samper may be regarded as the type 
of the youngest of Young Granada, speaking through Triana, 
so may Don Mariano Ospina, not inaptly clothed in Jesuit robes, 
on page 193, be the oracle of respectable fogyism, as represent- 
ed below by the mature-minded, slow, almost regressive Hoyos. 

Below us, on the plain, was a hacienda of ex-President San- 
tander's. Taking that for our text, we make Triana observe : 

To that man New Granada owes more than she ever has or 
ever will to any other. 

Dr. Hoyos. We owe much to Santander indeed, but had it 
not been for Bolivar, we should have had no chance to owe any 
thing to Santander or to any other patriot. Without a man 
like Bolivar, a general equal to Napoleon, and a statesman equal 
to Washington, our distracted country would have contended in 
vain, not so much against the courage as against the numbers, 
ferocity, and brutality of the Goths of the mother country (me- 
tropoli). 

T. I can agree with you only in what relates to Bolivar's 
military talents. As a statesman, the Vice-president Santan- 
der, residing in Bogota while the Libertador was at the head of 
the army, directed judiciously, except when the impetuous war- 
rior dictated some decree from the camp to throw into confusion 
the sagest provisions of the " Man of the Laws." And small 
merit was it to deliver us from a transatlantic tyrant, to rule us 
himself as a dictator in Bogota ! 

H. What Bolivar did was a necessity forced upon him by 



DICTATOKSHIP OF BOLfVAE. 205 

the confusion and political ignorance of the country. For eleven 
years, from the glorious 20th of July, 1810, to the Congress of 
Ciicuta in 1821, we were without a form of government. Boli- 
var was elected President, and Santander Vice-president under 
that Constitution, but the liberty of the country was yet to 
achieve. The changes introduced into our condition by that 
Constitution were too great and too violent. We had no expe- 
rience in self-government, for which we have even to go to the 
English language for a name ; every thing had been left to ex- 
ecutive power, and now the executive was too weak. 

T. It was rather too strong than too weak. The executive 
is the only dangerous element of government, the only depart- 
ment that has ever turned despot. Instead of the changes be- 
ing too great and too sudden, they were too timid and too few 
to meet the wants of the case. Not a rag of the old system of 
tyranny ought to have been left for a day. The authors of that 
cowardly Constitution were afraid of their own shadows. They 
had no confidence in the power of democratic institutions, and 
therefore dared not install the true republic. Instead of freeing 
all the slaves at once, it meanly ordains the freedom at 18 of 
all thereafter born, leaving the others to be ransomed by the 
slow operation of a fund. Capital punishment, the connection 
between Church and state, the exemption of the clergy and mil- 
itary from civil courts, and, indeed, the army itself, is inconsist- 
ent with republicanism. So are all monopolies, all limitations 
of the right of suffrage, all restrictions on the liberty of the 
press, imprisonment for debt, and, in a word, every particle of 
the institutions handed down to us by our tyrants. 

S. And you would have all changed at once ? 

T. Certainly ; it was the only course that could have given 
the country rest. 

H. Now, to my mind, such a beginning would have been 
clearly impossible. And the restlessness of political enthusi- 
asts, that let themselves loose upon the government, both from 
the forum and the press, with plans and language alike extrav- 
agant (to say nothing of revolutionary schemes), was just what 
necessitated more severity in administration, and more restraint 
on the press. Bolivar's work was not to administer a free gov- 
ernment, but to prepare a liberated people for liberty. He would 



206 NEW GKANADA. 

have steadily advanced to that end, had not turbulent spirits, 
like Dr. Francisco Soto and Dr. Vicente Azuero, been perpetual- 
ly thwarting every measure of preparation. 

T. What preparation, nor what dead baby ?* Do you call 
re-establishing convents that had been abolished; strengthen- 
ing the power of the priests, that had been destroyed by their 
adhesion to the cause of tyrants ; issuing arbitrary decrees to 
abrogate contracts fairly made (that for the navigation of the 
Magdalena, for instance) ; placing restrictions on the schools, 
and delivering them over to the priesthood bound hand and foot 
— do you call that the work of preparation for freedom ? 

H. We shall never agree on questions as to priests and 
schools. I know that I am in a hopeless minority, but I have 
right on my side, as you must confess, or avow yourself no 
Christian. But, apart from this, Bolivar opposed himself, not 
to the will of the people, but to the ravings of political lunatics. 
Elected by the Convention of Cucuta, he was re-elected by the 
people in 1825, after these acts of regression, as you call them. 
But demagogues who sought office, not the good of the people, 
beset his course, till, in 1827, he resigns. His resignation is 
not accepted, and, as a last resort, he again appeals to the peo- 
ple in the Convention of Ocana. 

T. I wonder that you dare allude to the Convention of 
1828. A candid history of the years 1827 and 1828 would 
fully bear out Samper's remark, that the liberators of a country 
ought to meet with any other reward than a share in its subse- 
quent government. General Paez had risen in rebellion against 
Colombia on the 30th April, 1826, from motives of sheer ambi- 
tion, and with no other pretense even. Bolivar visits him, con- 
cocts plans with him, manifests open friendship for him, and then 
returns to Bogota and resigns the presidency. His tools, who 
were in majority in the Congress of 1827, refuse to accept his 
resignation, and call the Convention of Ocana for the express 
purpose of adding to his power. Meanwhile, what is going on 
at Guayaquil ? The Intendant there is Tomas Cipriano Mos- 
quera, the proudest, if not the richest man in New Granada, 

* i Que preparation ni que nine- muerto ? The ne plus ultra of uselessness 
with a Spaniard is a dead baby, or sometimes calabashes — <r Que preparacion ni 
que calabazas ? 



OCANA CONVENTION. 207 

the head of the royal family of New Granada, for he now is ex- 
president, brother of an ex-president, father-in-law of an ex-pres- 
ident, and brother of an archbishop [since deceased], 

H. And all of them worthy of the highest posts they ever 
rilled. 

T. Well, our Chevalier Bayard, "sans peur et sans re- 
proche," as you call Mosquera, proclaims Bolivar dictator. 

H. A masterly step, by which Mosquera had nothing to 
gain, and on which hung the last hope of the integrity of the 
nation, which hope had two fatal obstacles to contend with: 
the transcendental chimeras of you Liberales, and the ambition 
of a hundred intriguers for high offices, including twenty who 
wanted to be president. But go on. 

T. Well, the Convention meets March 2d, 1828, the black- 
est year of Colombian history. 

H. You may well say that. But go on. 

T. Bolivar is in the minority. He locates himself, with 
3000 troops, at Bucaramanga, as near Ocaiia as he dares come. 
There, after trying in vain to intimidate the majority, he in- 
duces a minority of twenty to secede on the 10th June, and leave 
them without a quorum ; and then, three days after, on the 13th 
June, Pedro Alcantara Herran, who married into the royal fam- 
ily, calls an assembly in Bogota, and again proclaims Bolivar 
dictator, as his father-in-law had done the year before in Guay- 
aquil. 

H. And for the same reasons, and better. But go on. 

T. The Liberator and Enslaver accepts the post. On the 
27th of August of this same 1828 he issues his organic decree, 
virtually abolishing the Constitution of 1821. 

H. And in September ? 

T. In September, but for the interposition of a prostitute 
lodged in the palace, he would have met the reward of his 
deeds. 

S. You admit, then, that the conspirators of 1828 had de- 
cided to assassinate him who had sacrificed all his property, 
endured starvation and the cold of the paramos with the com- 
mon soldiers, and risked his life in a hundred battles for the 
freedom of his country ? 

T. When a benefactor, turned tyrant, is protected by such 



208 NEW GEANA.DA. 

men as the Mosqueras and the Herranes, and by that unfail- 
ing foe to liberty, a standing army, there is on cheaper or 
better remedy — no other in this case. What is necessary is 
right.* 

H. And who was the head of this conspiracy ? 

T. There was no head. Seven young men of Bogota pre- 
sided each over his section. 

H. Youths who had never seen a battle, and knew the use 
of no other weapon than a poniard. But Santander ? 

T. There is no doubt but that the Vice-president, robbed of 
his office a few weeks before by a tyrannical decree, and who, 
on the dictator's death, would be the constitutional President, 
knew something of what was going on ; but he had no direct 
part in the conspiracy, and was condemned to death without 
any evidence of complicity. You, Serior Norte Americano, have 
seen the autos of the trial in Colonel Pineda's collection of 
pamphlets, have you not ? 

I. I saw them, and the commutation of the sentence from 
death to banishment in Bolivar's own hand-writing, but I did 
not examine them farther. 

If. And now let me tell you how it was : Bolivar's dictator- 
ship was in accordance with the wishes of all lovers of stability, 
but was contrary to the theories of certain young students of 
Jeremias Bentam, and in the way of hundreds of projects of 
personal ambition. All these pointed to Bolivar's death as the 
cutting of a Gordian knot, but the final result could have been 
nothing but terrific anarchy. Santander and Bolivar were dif- 
ferent by nature, and could not work together in such tempestu- 
ous scenes. We will hope that the Vice-president would have 
kept himself free from such a stain on his character had he not 
felt himself injured by the decree of the 27th August, 1828. 
The conspiracy extended even to Popayan, and doubtless em- 
braced both Lopez and Obando, but it became so nearly discov- 
ered that the mine had to be sprung almost at an hour's notice, 
at midnight between 25th and 26th September, 1828. The as- 
sassins, covered with blood, are already at the palace door, and 
the guards are already overpowered by the sword and dagger, 
when the Liberator first learns his danger. He resolves to die 
* See Samper's Apuntamientos, pp. 102-106. 



ATTEMPT TO ASSASINATE BOLIVAR. 209 

a Roman death, and proceeds, unarmed, to meet his murderers. 
But Manuela Saenz — 

T. Has ever any president, since the bachelor Bolivar, kept 
a mistress in the very palace ? 

IT. Our best presidents have had their failings as men. The 
heroism of this woman (to be classed only with Rahab) has 
changed the whole face of our history, and saved us from one 
civil war more. She detains Bolivar — directs him to the east- 
ernmost window, the last in the Palace as you go up toward the 
theatre. He drops from it, only eight or nine feet, into the 
clear street, goes up to the corner, turns south to the River 
San Agustin, and hides under the bridge two blocks above the 
Bridge of San Agustin. 

I. And Manuela ? 

H. The woman, who has never thought of dressing, meets 
the assassins on the stairs, dares them to kill her, and declares 
that otherwise they can come no farther. They are past her ; 
the stains of bloody hands are on her white robes, but she is 
otherwise uninjured, and the Liberator is safe. And while he 
lives there is no hope of the success of the conspiracy. A few 
of the leaders paid the penalty of their lives, and others were 
banished. Santander himself continued in banishment till, in 
1832, he was elected President. 

I. What became of Bolivar ? 

H. He returned that day to the palace. One unfortunate 
attempt more was made against his power in Antioquia, where 
poor Jose Maria Cordova, who had fought at Bolivar's side, high 
in rank though still a boy, was stretched on the bloody field of 
Santuario. This fatal day was in the year 1828. General 
O'Leary, now British embassador in Bogota [since dead], com- 
manded the Dictator's troops on that occasion. 

Bolivar was superseded in 1830 by Joaquin Mosquera, the 
last President of Colombia. True, Tomas Cipriano was his 
brother, and a good president, his bitterest and most ambitious 
enemies being judges : he was none the worse for being of good 
family. A new Constitution was at the same time adopted ; but 
Paez in Venezuela, and Florez in Ecuador, secured the rejection 
of both President and Constitution, and a bloodless and com- 
plete dismemberment of Colombia was effected in 1831. 

O 



210 NEW GRANADA. 

Bolivar, when relieved from office, retired to Cartagena. The 
man who had encountered more perils than any other of his gen- 
eration died a natural death, at San Pedro, near Santa Marta, 
on 17th December, 1830 ; and he died poor, after so long pos- 
session of supreme power. 

We may suppose the discussion to have reached this point, 
when the arrival of something warm from the kitchen gave a 
new turn to things. I do not introduce this as a fair specimen 
of the conflicting accounts from which the traveler has to form 
his opinions, for the statements I have given could have hardly- 
been expected to occur unmixed with falsehoods, believed or not 
believed by the narrator, and exaggerations which it would be 
difficult to pare down to proper dimensions ; but by giving these 
details, I may escape coming to a conclusion in a doubtful matter. 

Of the precise nature of the something warm I can say noth- 
ing. I think I have recollected enough for one day, so you will 
excuse my stating its name, composition, or how it tasted. This 
over, and followed by some dulce from the cojinetes of the pious 
conservador, we began to turn our thoughts homeward. 

I have not yet spoken of my zamarras. Don Fulano thought 
it not respectable for me to ride out without zamarras, so he lent 
me his. They are a sort of overalls, or imperfect pantaloons of 
hide — I should judge, in this instance, of bull's hide. Certain it 
is that, once in them, I was as helpless as a modern knight in 
ancient armor. It took two to extract me from them and en- 
case me in them ; to mount, I had to climb on a bench ; and 
when I dismounted, it seemed as if the saddle was sticking to 
me. It was months before I repeated the experiment, and then 
with a more pliable pair. Zamarras are exhibited in the figures 
of the Orejon, the Carguero and Babe, and the Vaquero. In 
the last they are of the skin of the tigre, called jaguar in other 
Spanish countries, which I suppose to be the Felis discolor, the 
most formidable animal of the New World, but fortunately rath- 
er rare, and cowardly. 

Once fairly stuck upon my horse, I had time to look again at 
the weather. The ground was white with hail, but now it nei- 
ther hailed nor rained. Facilis descensus was not written on the 
side of a wet mountain. Before the rain the descent would 
have been difficult, now it was absolutely dangerous. Both my 



HAIL-STORM. 211 

friends' horses fell with them during the trip, but we escaped 
unhurt. In some places, after again reaching the plain, we found 
five inches of hail! In a fit of absence of mind, it seemed nat- 
ural enough to me. I forgot that to-day is here reckoned the 
first day of summer, or, as we would call it, of the dry season. 
The terms seem equally inapplicable to-day. This crop of hail- 
stones is counted a blessing, and is eagerly treasured up for ice 
creams. 

Indeed, the plain had been visited by no ordinary storm. 
Roads were turned into rivers. Encumbered as were our hands, 
to say nothing of my zamarras, it was no easy task to pick our 
way. Triana suggested that our horses might profit by the ad- 
vice to Virgil's ram, JVbn bene ripce creditur; which, I affirm, 
coincides with the idea of Horace, that the Ibis is safest in the 
middle: "In medio tutissimus ibis ,"" while the conservador, 
with a caution habitual to his creed, suggests that, if we follow 
the advice of such heathen, we may have occasion to cry, Depro- 
fundis clamavi. However, we reached home, before dinner of 
necessity, but near night, not very richly rewarded for our jour- 
ney except by the good we derived from each other's company. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

MONTSERRATE AND THE BOQUERON. 

Aqueduct. — Bathing Excursion. — Houses not Homes. — Quinta of Bolivar. — Hill 
Difficulty, and a Way of doubtful Holiness. — Chapel. — Perpetual Snow. — 
Some nice Plants. — A cold Region and its Inhabitants. — The Boqueron. — 
Leneras. — Scarcity of Wood. 

In the last chapter I mentioned passing the Rio Arzobispo — 
Archbishop River — which bursts down from the mountains just 
beyond the northern limits of our Plan on page 153, and hurries 
down into the plain to join the Bogota. 

One day I wished to bathe. The most attentive friend I had 
in Bogota, who could never do too much for me, conducted me 
here. We were to. start at ten, but he was occupied till twelve. 
In fact, it is almost impossible to set out at a fixed time here. 
We proceeded along the Alameda till we came to the convent 



212 NEW GRANADA. 

of San Diego (c in the Plan), when we began obliquely to ascend 
the foot of the mountain. We soon struck the aqueduct that 
supplies our part of Bogota. It is a sort of drain a foot wide, 
with the water six inches deep. Most of the way it is covered, 
but not so as to protect it from surface wash. 

It had recently rained, and the water at the pila was of a rich 
brown color, but where it entered the head of the aqueduct 
through a small strainer it was perfectly clear. I did not like 
very well to know that the dirt I drink had been so recently in- 
corporated with my chocolate. 

We followed the acequia to its origin, and the river upward 
from this point. Soon the climbing became arduous, and at two 
(our dinner hour at home) we stood together at a fine fall of twen- 
ty feet into a pretty little basin. I began to make preparations 
for a bath, but my guide and physician assured me that the wa- 
ter was too cold and I too warm. 

The barrier before us seemed insuperable. We passed it, 
however, at the risk of our necks, to another fall and basin very 
similar to the lower, and just above it. We came near being 
imprisoned here by a shower making absolutely impassable the 
dangerous path we had climbed. 

High above us on the cliff was a man throwing down sticks 
and roots for fuel. They fell to a spot near the path by which 
we had been coming up here, but before we had passed the place 
where his projectiles struck, he had completed his load, descend- 
ed with an unbroken neck, drawn his ropes out from a hiding- 
place where we had seen them, bound the fagots on his shoul- 
ders, and gone to sell them. 

Our descent was not so easy. We could not tell why we 
came there, as, though the lower falls yielded us a large num- 
ber of plants, and some very rare ones, a Vaccinium among the 
rest, there was nothing new that we wanted after passing the 
first point where our bones were in danger. Farther down was 
an Aroid plant in flower that I must have. We could not reach 
it. We looked about for a stick to pull it down with. Absurd 
idea! every stick big enough to strike a mule with has long 
since been carried to town and sold for fuel. But I must have 
it ; so I mounted Dr. Pacho on my shoulders, as he was the 
lighter and I the stronger. He could barely reach it, but after 



RIO ARZOBISPO. 213 

several good pulls down came it, he, and I in a heap together. 
Farther on, we passed the proper place without even discussing 
the proposition of bathing, as night was now approaching. I 
returned loaded with rare plants. 

On the banks of the river, below where we first came upon 
it, was the smallest human habitation I ever have seen or ex- 
pect ever to see. It was so small that I could not have lain 
straight in it except diagonally, and its breadth and height were 
less than the length. I have seen poorer houses, however, for 
it was tight, and had a door that would fasten, and was fasten- 
ed: it was a house, and not a hovel. But a house is not al- 
ways a home. I know not, indeed, that there is really a home 
except among the northern races of Europe. I know of no word 
nearer to it than casa — house — in Spanish, and have not once 
found it a loved place, as home is with us, in all my wanderings. 
The perennial absence of fires for warmth may have something 
to do with it. In this respect our poorest cabin stands as far 
above the richest residences in Bogota as they 'excel the little 
kennel against the eaves of which I was leaning, looking over 
the ridge-pole as some sad thoughts passed through my mind. 

The next visit in geographical order was Montserrate, the 
chapel-crowned peak that hangs over the north end of the city. 
Senor Triana, the young conservador and botanist, was here my 
companion. The time of day he selected was before breakfast, 
and being, perhaps, the most prompt man in New Granada, he 
called for me at daylight. I went at once, to the astonishment 
of the servants, and to the great scandal of my hosts when they 
found that I had gone out without my chocolate. I carried 
with me, however, the materials necessary for that beverage, 
and a small tin pail in which to boil it. 

If the reader will turn to the Plan of Bogota on page 153, he 
will see in the northeast corner the quinta, or country-seat of 
Bolivar, marked there with the letter d. We threaded our way 
through the city to the point where a dotted line along the San 
Francisco leaves the city, and runs up to the quinta. Thi3 
dotted line is a path along the bank, with a range of miserably 
huts, like the negro quarters on a Southern plantation, extend- 
ing along the north side for some distance. We soon turned 
out of this toward the north, and then rose so high as to over- 



214 NEW GEANADA. 

look the little patch of fruit-trees, inclosed by high walls, that, 
with the house within, was once a magnificent present from the 
Liberator to Pepe Paris, a worthy patriot since dead, who 
erected the statue of Bolivar that adorns the Plaza. It is said 
that when Pepe was feasting there one day with Bolivar and 
other friends, one of them had the audacity to drink to Bolivar 
that he might become King of Colombia. Pepe gave the next 
toast. It was, " Bolivar : if he ever become king, may his blood 
flow like this wine !" dashing it with the word to the floor. All 
was silent : Bolivar sprang up, caught Paris in his arms, and 
embraced him. 

Soon from steep walking we came to climbing. Here the 
various paths became contracted into one that went up in zig- 
zags. It was amazingly worn, being sunk into the earth in 
some places to the depth of many feet by the travel of three 
centuries upon the same spot. Had it been a road of daily use 
for business, it would not have surprised me ; but that a road, 
traveled only for pleasure or devotion (often for both at once), 
should have become so deeply worn in the steep face of a 
mountain, seemed incredible. Some of these cuts — here called 
callejones — look like deep ditches worn into the ground by the 
action of water, so that you can not see out as you pass them. 

As we rose, the plain opened out beneath us, and the city 
displayed itself as in a map. It is any thing but a beautiful 
sight, for you see but little except tiled roofs, and the ugly 
towers of churches, that look all the uglier when you look down 
upon them instead of seeing them from below. 

Now we come to several little niches, called eremitas — her- 
mitages. They have nothing in them but a little cross in each. 
The larger ones might shelter a couple of persons from the 
weather, and here, possibly, other objects than Our Lady may 
be worshiped sometimes. 

At a distance of ten or twelve miles, the Chapel of Our Lady 
of Montserrate appears to be about two thirds the way up the 
hill, while from the city beneath it seems perched on the high- 
est pinnacle. Neither view is correct : there is land adjoining 
the chapel 50 or 100 feet higher, but the higher tops seen over 
it from the distant plain are much farther off. The altitude of 
the church is little more than 1800 feet above the city. Ob- 



MONTSEREATE. 215 

servers differ as to whether it is more or less than two miles 
above the sea. The thermometer stands here from 49° to 52°. 

Arrived at the top, we found a group of buildings, consisting 
of a church and residences for priest and sacristan, the last of 
whom resides there with a disgusting family and a pack of very 
noisy dogs. The key, I was told, had been carried down to 
the city that morning by a boy. It was a lie, no doubt. Two 
sides of the pile could be seen from the plain, and these were 
beautifully whitewashed. All around, out-doors, were the re- 
mains of fires, and other evidences of field -feasts. Of the 
brands of our predecessors we made a reluctant fire to boil some 
water, brought from a spring a little below, for our chocolate. 
After all, it cost more than it was worth in precious time, for, 
though the air was rather keen, we had provided against it by 
extra dress. 

While this was doing, we went up to a platform with a para- 
pet around it, and looked off. The prospect here well repays 
the toil. First, there is the city beneath your feet. You could 
see the houses and all their courts, the rivers with their few 
bridges, the convents and men in the Plaza dwarfed to insects. 
Beyond lies the plain, covered in spots with water, which has 
been increasing ever since the rains began. Then there are 
hills rising like islands, and the irregular coast-line of the rim 
of the basin. But beyond, my eye caught an object which is 
never seen without interest. It was a peak and a long plain at 
its base. Both are covered with perpetual snow. They are the 
Peak of Tolima and the Paramo of Ruiz. They lie 90 miles, 
air line, to the west, five days' journey beyond the Magdalena. 
The clouds soon shut out the sight, and I have never seen it 
since. 

I dare not trust myself to speak of the plants that I found 
here. Some I saw on the before-mentioned trips, and some even 
in ascending to the plain of Bogota. Most of the plants I speak 
of at this altitude are scraggy shrubs, with small stiff leaves. 
Few, indeed, are as high as my head, and I know not that there 
was an annual herb among the whole. 

Smallest leaves of all have the Aragoas. There are but two 
species in the world, and there is no other genus much like them. 
Both these species are confined to these heights near Bogota, 



216 NEW GEANADA. 

one being common — A. cupressina — and the other very rare, so 
that I at length despaired finding it, and my friends here had 
never seen it. They look like young spruces or cedars when 
out of flower. The flowers are small, white, and anomalous. 
They are regular and four-parted, but are referred to the irregu- 
lar five-parted Scrophulariate family.* 

A splendid vine, the very queen of the composite family, is 
dedicated to the honor of Mutis, the old priest who correspond- 
ed with Linnaeus, who came from Spain somewhere about 1760, 
was for a long time in pay of the government as botanist, orig- 
inated the Observatory in Bogota, and died there 11th Septem- 
ber, 1808, at the age of 77. Well for him that he was not a 
younger man, and living in 1816, for the Goth Morillo would 
have shot him as a learned man had he been true to his coun- 
try. As it was, he only sent his writings to be buried in the 
archives of Madrid, inaccessible to botanists till they are nearly 
useless. Caldas charges him of withholding information, and 
even of purposely leaving his writings in a condition to be of 
little service to any other than himself. The Mutisias belong- 
to the rare Bilabiate division of Composite plants. They have 
long heads of splendid scarlet blossoms in an involucre, that 
might serve for a model of a porte-bouquet. 

The Thibaudias are numerous at cold altitudes. One I saw 
here with an eatable but rather insipid berry, called uva cima- 
rrona — wild grape. It is an Ericate bush, with thick, long corol- 
las, that look as if carved out of red coral. These thick flowers 
have a pleasant sour taste. 

Here, too, I saw the characteristic plant of the paramos — the 
frailejon. Various species of Espeletia besides E. Frailexon are 
so called. They have yellow composite flowers, like elecam- 
pane, and trunks like gigantic mullein-stalks, in some places six 
feet high and four inches in diameter, and without branches. 
The frailejon yields a stiff kind of turpentine, that is brought to 
market in a sort of bottle, made by folding the leaves of the 
plant. These leaves are 8 or 10 inches long, tomentose and 
white like those of the mullein. They serve sometimes to save 

* In the Nov. Gen. et Spec, of Humboldt and Bonpland there is a plate hear- 
ing the name of A. juniperina. The branch is identical with that representing 
A. cupressina, but the anatomical details are different and not true. 



MOUNTAIN CHAPEL. 217 

the traveler from death by cold when he is caught in the para- 
mo by night or storm, without any refuge from the cold except 
by burying himself in these leaves. Fire is not thought of. 
There is no fuel. 

The only other plant I shall mention is the chusquea, a grass 
that might be regarded almost as a climber. Its hard woody 
stem is brought in bundles into Bogota, to be used in the con- 
struction of the roofs and sides of cheap houses. It is the Chus- 
quea scandens. 

We entered the buildings attached to the church. They 
seemed a convent on a small scale, uninhabited, indeed, but in 
good order. Not so the kitchen. It seems to be the daily and 
nightly habitation of a large family, human and canine. The 
former seemed to care very little for us, but the latter manifest- 
ed a great interest in our legs, but evidently were afraid of the 
consequences of yielding to their impulses. In the church there 
is said to be a miracle-working copy of a miracle-working pic- 
ture of Our Lady of Montserrate in Spain ; but this could work 
nothing for heretics, of course, nor for Liberales, who, in fact, are 
little better. 

The kitchen faces the north, and from the parapet there the 
ground descends rapidly to the garden and the spring, in a little 
amphitheatre scooped in the mountain. We passed round west 
and north of this. On a little plot of grass near the kitchen 
the family were spreading out a large supply of priestly vest- 
ments — albas, casullas, capas pluviales, ornamentos, parmentos, 
cingulas, estolas, frontales, etc., etc., etc. Now, good reader, 
do not look for these things in the glossary, for I hardly know 
them one from another, and you do not wish to. 

We walked along to the north, nearly to the head of the Arch- 
bishop River. First we rose a hill higher than the top of the 
church. Then descending, we walked a long way on the top of 
the ridge, having on our right a gentle descent, and again be- 
yond higher mountains, nearly twice as high in reality as the 
place where we are. On our left was almost a precipice extend- 
ing to the plain beneath. All this distance we met scarce a 
plant that grew on the plain beneath, or on the mountain's base. 

Southward of the church the ground descends gradually for 
some distance. I was shown a spot here where it is affirmed 



218 NEW GKANADA. 

that the ground is warm. I think the word ought to be used 
with some qualification, for I doubt whether a thermometer 
buried there would ever rise to 60° before the final conflagration. 
Imagination works wonders — indeed it works most of the won- 
ders that I have jet examined here. 

I saw growing here a gentian, a veritable Gentiana, five inch- 
es high, sometimes blue, and sometimes entirely white. And 
another familiar genus, the Lupinus, I found represented by a 
huge plant as high as my head, near the church ; but I am for- 
getting my promise a little while back. Well, I will just men- 
tion one more, which closely resembles our common house-leek 
or live-forever. I suppose it to be Sedum bicolor. 

A little southward of the "warm ground" the land descends 
rapidly toward a huge gulf, the Boqueron, through which rushes 
the San Francisco River, with a road creeping along its side. 
We descended to a peak, called the Macaw's Bill, which looks 
up the basin of the San Francisco, a space of moderately hilly 
country, dotted with cottages and small fields cleared of bushes. 

But I must not dismiss it so. From the head of the Boque- 
ron, which might easily be spanned by a suspension bridge 1000 
feet above the river, the ground rises in every direction. The 
west side of this amphitheatre is the wall through which the San 
Francisco breaks at the Boqueron, and on the two sides of which 
once stood the chapels of Montserrate and Guadalupe. The 
first we have just left ; the other, which stood at a greater ele- 
vation, is a pile of ruins that we have yet to visit. The eastern 
border of this habitable slope is the paramo of Choachi. We 
might make the circuit of all this slope, occupied perhaps by 50 
wood-selling families in huts and hovels, by traveling about 20 
miles, without descending at any time to a spot as low as where 
we now stand. Our track would be nearly a circle. 

All the space within it seems at first to be a forest, into which 
settlers have moved for the first time only a month ago, and 
have just cleared spots large enough to build on. But it would 
need but a single tree to dispel the illusion. In all that space 
there is not perhaps a trunk three inches in diameter, or a bough 
20 feet above the ground. All is bushes — stunted, gnarled 
shrubs, that make a walk there a terrible monotony. We know 
no English name for any useful plant that will grow there, ex- 



POOR MOUNTAINEERS. 219 

cept potatoes and barley. Not even these are cultivated, and 
how and why people live there is an inexplicable mystery. 
With every desirable climate in the world within two days' 
journey of them, and land to be had any where for the asking, 
why do they live here ? 

As I must give a reason, I will venture on two. These people 
must live near Bogota. The same necessity that keeps some 
20,000 wretches in New- York, who must starve every winter, 
and live by their wits all summer, because they can not endure 
the terrible solitudes of a country town, compels these poor 
creatures to live where they can visit Bogota every few days. 
They would live on the plain, but there the ground is all taken 
up by large proprietors, who can grow rich by raising wheat 
or cattle, but who could make nothing by raising so cheap and 
useless product as men. These weeds of the animal creation 
are suffered to grow, like other weeds, where the ground is not 
susceptible of cultivation. And these poor people are indeed 
weeds — "creation's blot, creation's blank," not figuring either 
among producers or consumers. Had they not immortal souls, 
Avere they not susceptible of religion, education, and civilization, 
it were a pity some measures could not be taken to exterminate 
them, for I know of no creature in the animal kingdom that en- 
joys less and suffers more. 

The other reason why these poor creatures do not migrate to 
warmer lands is that they dislike high thermometers and ba^- 
rometers. An atmospheric pressure of 30 inches of mercury is 
intolerable to their lungs. They can not persuade themselves 
that the air is not charged with some deleterious substance. 
It seems to differ from pure air just as a viscid liquid does from 
water. Neither would they be capable of enduring the heat 
and light of a New England summer without being cared for 
like polar bears. I would not attempt to summer one of them 
in New-York without the aid of darkened rooms and ice-houses. 

From the Macaw's Bill we climbed up and returned by the 
road we came, for descent here was out of the question. In- 
deed, we hardly dared throw stones into the Boqueron lest they 
should fall on the head of some luckless traveler in the road 
beneath, where they seemed to be moving like ants. In fact, 
there was no danger, for our projectiles, urged horizontally with 



220 NEW GEANADA. 

our utmost force, seemed to turn like a boomerang, and to strike 
almost under our feet. 

Never had I been so laden with floral treasures as when I 
returned to Bogota. I had picked a small-flowered Alstrceme- 
ria, the vine of which had grown into a loop, through which I 
put my arm. In this way it seemed as if dropping out of my 
mammoth bouquet. As I was passing down by San Juan de 
Bios, a little girl thought she had better secure the prize that 
otherwise must fall to the ground, and laid hold of it from be- 
hind, not thinking that I should feel it as it took leave of me. 
I turned round, and evidently surprised her by the specimen I 
gave her of my attainments in Castilian, for she fled precipi- 
tately. 

I made an attempt with Senor Triana afterward to pass the 
Boqueron on horseback. Passing up out of town, we left Boli- 
var's country-seat (d) and the river (e) on the left, and on the 
right two grist-mills, an extinct paper-mill, and a manufactory 
of crude quinine (g). Our road rose rapidly till the mountain 
shut us in, and the Church of Montserrate, high on our left, 
disappeared from view. Patches of the cliffs were red with Be- 
gonias unexcelled by any ever seen by Hogg or Dunlap. The 
Odontoglossum, with its bushel of yellow orchid flowers, here 
and there perched itself just out of human reach. At length 
came a pass too narrow for a path, and we had to climb a point 
of rock on the south side. Such a getting up stairs on back 
of horse or mule I never did see. At length my friend's horse 
came to flat rebellion, and turned round as if to fall upon my 
head. My horse revolted also. Perhaps their heads were dizzy. 
At length I passed the recusant, who proceeded to scramble up 
to the top. 

No sooner were we up than again we had to descend. When 
the water is not very high indeed, the poor market-people follow 
the stream to avoid this cruel ascent and descent over stairs 
built of round stones, forever wet. 

A curious bush that we found in fruit here cost me immense 
trouble. At first I could find only fruit, a globe of the size of 
a plum, with a pair of green horns. Long after I found the pis- 
tillate flowers, but as it is dioecious, I never could find the other 
sex. It proves to be Styloceras laurifolium, which is badly 



SCARCITY OF FUEL. 221 

represented as to its fruit in Humboldt and Bonpland's Nov. 
Gen. 

We were now in the wildest part of the gulf. Nothing was 
visible but rock and sky, with the brawling stream rushing 
through the chasm. Here it began to rain. My health would 
not permit me to be wet with impunity, and we turned and re- 
treated. 

Against the rock where we turned I saw a poor woman lean- 
ing to rest. She had in her hand a long peon's staff, and on 
her shoulders a bundle, nearly as large as herself, composed of 
small sticks. This is a common sight. In this way Bogota 
is supplied with fuel. Little coal is used. All the wood is 
sold in bundles (not weighed, however, as in Paris), whether 
brought on backs of women or mules, or in carts. A little be- 
low I met a little girl, not twelve years old, loaded in this way. 
Her scant dress, her naked feet, and the cold, tempted me to 
pay her a dime for her load and throw it into the river. She 
would only have fished it out to sell again. To ameliorate the 
condition of the poor needs wisdom more than money. 

How long has this vicinity been woodless? Probably the 
Indians stripped it early of its wood, and it has never had a 
chance to grow again in all the centuries since. In my opin- 
ion, the slopes toward the plain might be nearly adequate to 
supply the demand for wood and timber, could it only have a 
chance to grow. I do not see that the land here has owners, 
nor would any one be enriched by it in this generation if the 
timber were preserved. And this would be impossible without 
sentinels night and day. 

It is worthy of remark that, wherever I have passed the bound- 
ary of the plain, all the slopes toward it have been stripped of 
trees ; but soon after you begin to descend from it, and particu- 
larly after the first steep descent, the country is well wooded. 
The hills there have been stripped of wood to meet the demands 
of the Sabana : this may always have been prairie. 



222 NEW GKANADA. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE PRISON, THE HOSPITAL, THE GRAVE. 

Guadalupe. — Discomfited Saint. — Boqueron and bathing Girls. — Miracle-work- 
ing Image. — Fuel-girl and Babe. — Powder-mill and Magazine. — Soldiers. — 
Cemeteries. — Day of Mourning-. — Potter's-fields. — Gallinazo. — Hospital. — 
Doctors and Apothecaries. — Provincial Prison. 

My kind friend, Dr. Pacho, who showed me where to swim, 
but not when to swim, proposed one day, as I was recovering 
from my sickness, to which I have alluded already, that we 
should make a short excursion the next day. Though still 
somewhat weak, I consented. 

I breakfasted early, and we were soon above the city, at a 
place called Agua Nueva, where a dotted line is seen on the 
Plan, passing from the east end of the street that runs up past 
the Cathedral : this is now a good road leading to the Boque- 
ron. This road we crossed, and I soon found we were rising 
higher and higher, directly in the rear of the north part of the 
city, and just south of the Boqueron. 

We came to the foundations of a church on a shoulder of the 
hill. The origin is said to be in the fact that, when the fane 
above was ruined by an earthquake, its sacred image was thrown 
down here, many hundred feet below, but that the next night it 
returned to the ruins above. They then attempted to rebuild 
the chapel down here, but the design fell through, and the poor 
image was at length compelled to content itself with quarters in 
the Church of San Juan de Dios in the city below, from whence 
it has not since tried to escape. 

Up went the tortuous ascent, but in many places the path 
was sunk into deep callejones. We still ascended till we could 
see over Montserrate — could see the horizon beyond — nay, even 
look down on the plain as it stretched off to the north of it. We 
came at length to the ruins of the upper church, in its day more 
splendid than that of Montserrate. This is the chapel of Our 
Lady of Guadalupe. 



GUADALUPE. 223 

Mounting these walls, I found myself higher than I ever had 
been before — 11,039 feet. I placed Mount Washington, in my 
imagination, with its foot at the level of the sea beneath me, and 
found its top so low as scarce to be discernible. 

From this point my friend, who never lost an opportunity of 
getting into trouble, suggested a descent toward the northeast, 
from which we could reach the city by passing through the Bo- 
queron. In fact, he thought this the easiest way to return 
home. We were soon committed, and too far down to retreat. 
The whole side was densely covered with bushes, and without a 
path. But gravity will do wonders when one trusts himself to 
it, and, strange to say, we reached the bottom, by good fortune 
and good management, bringing our clothes with us. Another 
task remained: it was to pass the Boqueron without wetting 
my feet, as at this time, when I was not acclimated, such a 
course would have inevitably brought on a relapse. The wild 
magnificence of the scene is unsurpassed by any thing I recol- 
lect. For more than a mile the walls were too steep to scale, 
and the bottom too narrow for a wagon-road. 

Through this narrow gorge much of the supplies of Bogota 
pass on the shoulders of men and women and the backs of 
oxen. Wood, charcoal, wheat, fowls, turpentine of frailejon in 
bottles made of leaves, and even plantains from the warmer re- 
gions beyond the mountains, come pouring down at all hours of 
the day, and particularly early Friday morning. 

Narrowly escaping a complete ducking in my efforts to save 
my feet, I had crossed and recrossed the stream till but one more 
crossing remained at the outlet of the Boqueron. Here a new 
obstacle met me. To pass where the road did was clearly im- 
possible; above was unscalable rock. Below was a narrow 
path close beside the water, where a group of bathing girls held 
possession. The whiteness of their skin showed them of no 
plebeian caste ; indeed, I learned they were headed by a school- 
mistress. How these naiads lived in the freezing current, where 
I dared not dip my foot, was to me a mystery ; but there they 
were. I must get round them as best I could. I did so, 
and at length below passed the stream, and gained the mouth 
of the Boqueron. Now came the rain. It rains every after- 
noon in the middle of the rainy season, but I was slow to find 



224 NEW GKANADA. 

it out, and my kind friends generally managed to "be caught 
in it. 

We took refuge in a venta. Passing through a little tienda, 
where market-people are apt to leave too much money and take 
too much chicha, we entered a desolate, empty sala, and seated 
ourselves on the cold poyo of adobe — a brick bench running 
around the room. Here we watched to see it rain. Across 
the patio were two other mean mud huts. The posts of the 
corredor were of the rough, curious stems of tree-ferns — palo 
bobo. 

I saw here a stupendous earth-worm — yes, an angle-worm, 
almost big enough to " bob for whale" with. But there is no 
need of hyperbole ; it was about two thirds of an inch in diam- 
eter, and eight or ten inches long. 

About 3 the rain ceased, and the doctor, finding I had had 
as much exercise and fasting as was good for a convalescent, 
agreed with me that it might be time to get home to our din- 
ners. 

I made a somewhat similar expedition a few days after, only 
I left the height of Guadalupe at my left. I passed first, on the 
base of the mountain, a church called Egypt (p on the Plan), 
whether from darkness or bondage, or both, I know not, but in 
either sense more churches than one might with propriety bear 
the name. Leaving the outskirts of the city behind me, by ris- 
ing still higher we reach the little Church of La Peiia — of Our 
Lady of the Cliff — with its miraculous image of Joseph, Mary, 
the infant Savior, and an angel bearing the custodia, in which 
they keep the consecrated wafer or hostia. This is the most 
venerated image I have ever seen. It was found by an Indian 
on an almost inaccessible peak above, carved out in the living 
rock, from which its base was not detached. With immense 
labor the piece was detached, lowered with ropes from its native 
crag, and here a temple was built for it. They covered the di- 
vine workmanship all over with paint, put showy dresses on the 
figures, and put the group in the camarin, where it contin- 
ues to work miracles, as are attested by wax models of arms, 
legs, eyes, etc., and pictures of various catastrophes, out of 
which those who called on La Seriora de la Peiia for help came 
out alive. 



MIEACLES. 



225 




fflfl 

VOTIVE OFFERINGS. 



We borrow the annexed diagram 
to show how the wax figures would 
look were they not crowded together, 
covering each other ; and the style of 
execution is fairly emulated Tby the 
engraver. The pictures were in the 
same style, or poorer, and exhibited 
a great variety of haps and mishaps. 
One lady, for instance, was riding up 
to Montserrate, and her horse turned 
a somerset down the hank with her. 
Through the intervention of this stone 
image, she was not killed. Another was crossing an exposed 
place during a bull-feast in the Plazuela of San Yictorino. The 
bull tumbled her over, and a comical sight she was, according 
to the picture ; but, thanks to La Pena, she lived through it. 

From here our course was southwest. A steep ascent, a 
mountain swamp, and a well-worn path over the ridge brought 
us in sight of two miserable little fields, and a hut covered with 
grass. Here we saw a man, his wife, and two little children 
preparing loads of wood for the city. A descent directly south 
brought us to a road, paved in some places, running along the 
banks of the Fucha. I turned and went from the city on this 
road. 

As I was going up a steep pitch, I met a sight which I shall 
not soon forget. It was a young girl, apparently fifteen, but 
doubtless older. She had on her back a large load of wood, but 
was descending the steep road with a quick, elastic step : in 
her right hand was the long staff they always carry, and on her 
left arm her babe, unconsciously drawing its nourishment from 
the living fountain. Ah, woman, how varied but universal are 
thy wrongs ! The father of this innocent may have been some 
country priest, living in coarse luxury, with nothing to tax the 
energies of his mind — neither cares, responsibilities, nor duties 
beyond the performance of prescribed ceremonies at prescribed 
times — nothing, in short, to do but " to draw nutrition, propa- 
gate, and rot." She, living possibly in a mud hut, seven feet 
long, six feet wide, and five feet from the eaves to the ground, 
contrives to eke out a subsistence for herself and babe by pick- 

P 



226 NEW GEANADA. 

ing up a load of sticks near her kennel, carrying them and her 
babe from seven to twelve miles, and selling her load for three 
half dimes. 

Near here I gathered the fruit of a curious shrub, the Coriaria. 
The flowers had been very small — scarcely noticeable, indeed, 
except for their number, and for apparently growing on the 
leaves ; but when the time came for it to go out of flower, the 
petals, instead of falling, took to growing. They became so 
distended with bright red juice as to appear almost black, and 
to have crowded each other out of shape, and into angular 
masses, hiding entirely the little capsule, and appearing like a 
berry. I found here, too, for the first time in South America, a 
mistletoe growing on a bush. 

The road from here to Bogota does not closely follow the 
River Fucha, but rises over a shoulder of the mountain at a 
considerable height, while the river enters the plain through a 
gorge. Here I found a gigantic figure painted on a sloping 
rock in the river, as if wading across it, with a child on his 
shoulders, and using a palm for a staff. It was Saint Christo- 
pher (Christ-bearer), of whose history, unfortunately, I know no 
more than is shown by the etymology of his name. I wonder 
if his mother gave him that name in infancy, and if, when 
grown to more than man's stature, he had the honor to carry 
once or repeatedly the infant Savior on his shoulders. But it 
is useless to ask. 

Just below here I took my first bath in the chilly climate of 
Bogota. I was in the water but an instant, and " bathed like a 
cat," Dr. Bayon said ; but the dip cost me that sickness of a 
fortnight. How the "hard inhabitant" can enjoy himself in 
the wintry stream — how even little children are, as I have seen 
them, copiously and deliberately bathed, is to me amazing. 

My visits to the plains have been fewer and less interesting. 
One was to a spot a little below this. We passed through 
fields with walls of unburnt brick and roof of tile — the gate- 
ways also roofed. A more hateful fence to the hunter or the 
botanist can not be found. He will not think of scaling it, and, 
perhaps, when he needs a gate, none is to be found. We pass- 
ed the southern borders of the city, and came to a mill, where 
wheat is bought and converted into a flour equal to our second 



SOLDIERS. 227 

or third rate. As a tropical voyage damages »our super line 
flour, it does not shame theirs when it gets here. 

On the same canal which comes from the Fucha stood the 
national powder-mill : government has since abandoned it, and 
the Serreria is to be sold. Examined from an eminence, it ap- 
peared to be an orderly, well-conducted establishment, but I did 
not enter it. 

On the very banks of the Fucha stands the magazine, under 
a guard of soldiers. It is a solitary building, with a piazza, sur- 
rounded by a high wall, part of which has been carried away by 
the floods. The soldiers were asleep, and I had entered the in- 
closure before I knew it was guarded. In the piazza hung a 
soldier's babe in a hammock, and near stood their guns. Their 
cooking was done by building a fire in the piazza against the 
walls of the magazine. We found the mother of the babe near 
the desolate concern. 

A little way from here I saw a body of troops washing clothes 
in the river within a line of sentinels. They had a few women 
engaged with them. The fewness surprised me, for when an 
army is on march there are more women than men. I have 
been repeatedly assured of this, and that the commanders expe- 
dite their march, and aid them across the rivers with the great- 
est attention. Soldiers here are smaller than other people. I 
am not tall, but I can look over the heads of a long line of 
troops, and see the top of every cap. I was first struck with the 
diminutive stature of the natives in a dense crowd in a church. 
It was new to me, who had been so often buried in crowds, to 
find my head projecting over the upper surface of one. I have 
sometimes been mortified by the rowdy conduct of the offscour- 
ing of the States in Spanish countries ; but when I see such 
troops, I do not wonder they are tempted to pitch into them, 
just for a little fun. One of the officers I saw was of unmix- 
ed African blood. 

I beg leave to introduce to the reader two specimens of this 
unfortunate and not very reputable class. The taller of the two 
is one of the President's Lancers, and the other one of the infant- 
ry. The dress of both resembles that of Northern troops, ex- 
cept that the feet are partially covered with alpargates, figured 
and described on page 236. Imagine the taller of these rather 



228 



NEW GEANADA. 




FOOT-SOLDIER AND LANCER. 



short, and no more impudent than a cavalry soldier is apt to be : 
might not some of the chivalrous sons of the Union be tempted 
to make him "know his place?" 

The country around the Fucha is not exactly flat, but inter- 
mediate between plain and mountain. All west of here is en- 
tirely level, and at this season of the year much of the ground 
is covered with water. It differs from Western prairies in that 
they have depressed edges, the boundaries being streams at a 
much lower level. Here the boundaries are hills, and the 
stream in the interior is at the surface of the plain. In both, 
the centre is apt to be wettest. 

In the plain west of the northern end of the city is the 
principal cemetery (a), the pride of Bogota. It is an ellipse of 
about an acre, surrounded by a high wall, with a chapel at the 



CEMETERY OF BOGOTA. 229 

farther end. Thus much I could see from the mountains. My 
visit there happened to "be just after All Saints, 2d November, 
the season when, in several successive Mondays, they do up the 
mourning for the year. I passed and met numerous groups of 
mourners, gayly laughing and chatting as they tripped to or 
from the house appointed for all the living. 

The theory of rural cemeteries is not understood in New 
Granada. Romantic situations are not sought, and great ex- 
tent is not desired. It may Ibe desirable that some monuments 
be perpetuated, but the bones themselves are not a sacred de- 
posit, so it matters not how full the ground may be while there 
is room on the surface. Hence the Granadan cemetery or Pan- 
teon is condensed, and most of the bodies are placed in the 
oven-like bovedas. The wall of the Cemetery of Bogota is 
made up of bovedas. These "narrow houses" are placed side 
by side, in three or four tiers, extending around the vast ellipse, 
except that the space opposite the entrance is occupied by a 
chapel, without which a cemetery is not complete. The roof 
that covers the bovedas extends over a walk before them, where 
the visitor is protected from the weather, as he contemplates 
paintings and inscriptions, on tin plate, in water-colors or oil. 
or chiseled in marble, and beautiful rose-colored fine sandstone 
that would never bear frost. Many remain as they were left 
when the aperture was closed on the inhabitant, and the name 
and date were written in the fresh mortar with a stick. 

A series of masses were going on, with the humane inten- 
tion of rescuing the 'deceased from an unpleasant situation, in 
which some of them must now have been for long months. 
While the chapel was full of worshipers, another group were go- 
ing from grave to grave, with one or two priests, singing a little, 
and sprinkling a little water on each grave. The price of a bo- 
veda is $8, which gives a right for ten years, when the bones are 
drawn forth without farther expense to either the purses or the 
feelings of the survivors. A grave in the ground is cheaper, and 
the body is left till the ground is wanted again. A perpetual 
right in the ground can be secured, but not in a boveda. 

I had left the ground, when I met a bier on the shoulders of 
four men, who were walking at a brisk pace, and shaking from 
side to side a body of which I could see the clasped hands and 



230 NEW GRANADA. 

naked face. The body was that of an aged female, dressed in 
white flannel. Arrived at the grave, it was fall of water. Here 
was a pause : some were for thrusting the body down into the 
water, others for dipping it out ; but some men who were digging 
an adjoining grave gave it up to the necessities of the case, and 
awkwardly, and with offensive exposure of the person, the body 
was laid in it. Then a boy caught up a huge lump of mud 
and pitched it down. It struck the body with a sullen sound, 
made the whole corpse quiver, tore aside part of the clothes, 
and disclosed the face and one little hand of a babe a few months 
old that had been concealed there ! I was horrified, but stood 
my ground. Clod after clod fell on their naked faces, until, lit- 
tle by little, the shocking scene passed from view. 

While these bodies were being buried like those of brutes, a 
dozen priests were within the consecrated grounds, but came not 
near the scene. I turned away sick at heart, but with a stron- 
ger desire to live to reach my native land than ever I felt before. 

The burial-place of the poor is down in the damp plain west 
of the city. The Bogotanos hoped I should not see it, for it is 
truly a horrible place. The fence leading to it was of wood — 
sticks tied to poles with thongs of raw hide ; but the fence of 
the cemetery was of tapias and tile. Within were bones scat- 
tered over the ground, and even a skull or two, and that un- 
clean bird, the gallinazo or chulo (Vultur Jota), nearly allied to 
our turkey-buzzard, was perched on the wall, desiring to defile 
his beak with the flesh of Christians, which I hope he could not 
reach, though he could smell it. This creature usually finds its 
upper limit before reaching the height of this plain, but Bogota 
seems to be an exception, as it is warm considering its altitude. 
We see large numbers of them walking over the waste places, 
seeking food, or opening out their sooty wings on a roof, where 
their peculiar position leads people to say that they are praying 
in cross, as they do at La Tercera. The king of the vultures, 
rey de los gallinazos — Vultur papa, the Vulture pope — is a dif- 
ferent bird, and not gregarious, like the gallinazo. When he 
comes to their feast, they, either from respect, or possibly from 
mere prudence, leave the whole to him till his majesty pleases to 
eat no more. On the whole, I do not think the gallinazo, though 
a graceless loafer, is so uncleanly as our turkey-buzzard — Vul- 



HOSPITAL. 231 

tur Aura — whose every feather disgusts, and when he has gorged 
so that he can not escape, is not ashamed to spew out his ob- 
scene repast on his captor. 

Half way up to the ledge above the city, near a brick-kiln, 
where they burn their bricks with brush smaller than hazel- 
bushes, is a place where they bury suicides, and sometimes, it is 
said, malefactors. They are buried like beasts, and their mem- 
ory perishes with them. Still, the good woman, whose rancho 
stands near the spot, dares not venture out-doors at night, as if 
the miserable walls that can not keep out the air could protect 
her from ghosts. I will add, now that my theme has taken so 
grave a turn, that the use of coffins is a new and growing prac- 
tice here, but as yet they are very expensive. The poor are 
carried to their last resort by four prisoners from the Presidio, 
attended by soldiers with loaded muskets. The introduction of 
bovedas would, I think, be a benefit to our own cemeteries. 

From the grave to the doctor is to go back but a single step, 
and yet I mean no disrespect to the profession, or to Dr. Meri- 
zalde, to make it and him the subject of my next remarks. A 
more estimable or modest man I do not know than this pious 
and venerable physician. His library is to me the most inter- 
esting private library I have seen in this country, and it is wor- 
thy of a more extended notice than I can give of it. It contains 
many very rare books, some of which have here been reposing 
for two centuries, while the other copies of them have been ex- 
posed to various casualties in Europe — have been flooded over 
and lost among the offspring of a prolific press, or worn out by 
too much use. To such dangers a book is no longer exposed 
when it has found a refuge here ; and I know of no more prom- 
ising a field for a hunter of rare books than in the old libraries 
of New Granada. 

Dr. Merizalde is the principal physician of the Hospital. I 
met him there once at the early hour which he devotes to this la- 
bor of love. The good old man had quite a number of students 
in his train, and went from bed to bed with the tenderness of a 
father. I was surprised at the number of patients I saw with 
a cake in their hand, but at length I noticed on the doctor's arm 
a blue cotton handkerchief, tied at the four corners, that must 
have held near a peck at first, from which they had been dex- 



232 NEW GRANADA. 

terously transferred to the beds of patients without attracting 
any notice. 

The Hospital is an old convent of the Hospital Brethren of St. 
John-of-God — San Juan de Dios. It was put into their hands 
at its erection as the best thing that then could be done ; but 
the monastic history of Bogota has been terrible. The only or- 
der ever here that was not a humbug and a scandal was the 
Jesuits. Say what we will of them now, I can not doubt that 
they were faithful at that time, and the first banishment of them 
from this country was an unwise and cruel step, dictated by any 
thing else than a regard for religion. But the monks of San 
Juan de Dios settled the question of how few patients they could 
take in, and still enjoy their spacious convent and fat larder. 
Government found itself at length compelled to suppress the or- 
der, and put the Hospital under charge of the gobernacion of the 
province. I think, however, it receives nothing from the pro- 
vincial treasury. 

The Hospital is not in good order : the rooms are old, the 
bricks of the floor are traversed by several crevices in each, that 
form so many secure depositories of dirt, some of which may 
perhaps date from the last century. Every thing seemed to 
have been badly contrived, and needed a thorough reform. This 
would require funds which there is no probability of their soon 
receiving. The kitchen was dirty and inefficient, without any 
large vessels for wholesale cookery, or any labor-saving arrange- 
ments. It seemed as if the cooking for each separate patient 
may have been carried on independently of the others, and every 
thing looked more as if the whole affair was there only tempo- 
rarily. So, too, of the dispensatory : it was in the most shock- 
ing condition, and never can be any better without a radical re- 
form. It gives the impression, too, that the medicines them- 
selves must be the worst of their kind, when every thing about 
them bears evidence of so much neglect. 

As to' the diseases, they can not be the same here as with 
us. There is little or no consumption: I do not recollect of 
even a single case. Dysentery reigns prime minister in the 
court of Death. I tried in vain to get at the statistics of the 
matter, but there were none at hand, and can only express an 
opinion that about one third of the deaths, if not one half, are ul- 



DOCTORS AND DISEASES. 233 

timately from this disease. I was surprised at the small num- 
ber of insane patients. Dismal indeed is their condition, and 
I think few recoveries could occur here. Syphilitic patients are 
not admitted. Many that apply from other diseases must be 
refused ; and Dr. Merizalde assured me that, were the hospital 
empty and opened for this disease alone, it would be filled in a 
day! 

Of course, the old monastery is not without its pictures illus- 
trative of the life of its patron saint. Here we see two devils 
tossing him back and forth to each other. I saw the hanging- 
scene described by Steuart, but our recollections differ widely : 
instead of a monk hanging a heretic, it seemed rather to me 
that the devil was strangling a man either with a rope or his 
tail, and that the saint delivers the victim. It is not very im- 
portant which is right, only I would put this most charitable 
construction on the matter ; but if I am wrong, so much the 
worse for the devil. 

Speaking of pictures, I saw one that, I confess, surprised me 
a little, hanging at the door of the church at a great fiesta. 
Pictures are frequently loaned on such occasions, and any face, 
male or female, is at once received as a saint. The one in 
question, however, was not in a shape to give much scope to 
charity : it was the priest Abelard making love to Heloisa. I 
mentioned the matter at home, and a guest present showed that 
she was better posted up in that old love-affair than was cred- 
itable to her, in my opinion. 

I can not say that I think the medical school or the faculty 
stand very high in general. Probably one half of the popula- 
tion never pay a fee — dying is cheaper. Dr. Cheyne, a Scotch 
gentleman who married here long since, and one or two natives 
who have studied in Paris, are the only ones on whom I could 
venture to rely. Fortunately, I never stood in need of them. 
The people here are said to be very averse to large fees. Out 
of cities a man can not live by practice, so it seems to me, as 
there is not the tenth of the whole population that ever receive 
any medical assistance from the day of their birth till their 
death, both inclusive. 

There are four or five apothecaries' shops here. They appear 
as good as need be : not as showy as our best, but really in good 



234 NEW GEANADA. 

condition and well served. I knew best that of Dr. Lombana. 
If a prescription were written with the weights here used, I 
would have no fear but that it would be properly put up. The 
safest way would be to write the prescription in granos of -$fo 
of a grain : a useful fact to remember, if we could only be sure 
of it. But the diversity of languages on earth is hardly more 
perplexing than the diversity of weights and measures, and 
here they are little sure of them, for their own have been chang- 
ed so often. Now the legal standard is that of the French. It 
ought to be universal. 

You are struck with the medicines here as being the same as 
at home. There are no druggists here. Even the ipecacuanha, 
if not the sarsarparilla, are brought from Europe or the United 
States. The pharmacopoeia is the old Spanish one, but most 
of the medical books read here are French. Indeed, a man who 
reads no other language than Spanish ought never to pass for 
an educated physician. 

From the Hospital it is natural to go to the Prison. I would 
wish to be excused from this task ; but as the jefe politico offer- 
ed to accompany me in person, and as a prison is always a prop- 
er place to tell the truth of, I could not excuse myself. The 
provincial prison is in the same block with the Halls of Con- 
gress, and distant not 200 feet from the chair of the President 
of the Senate. The entrance is on the street that runs down 
from the south side of the square. A guard of soldiers is always 
at the door. The prison within is very small and dirty at least, 
if not excessively so. It has not a whole patio to itself, but 
only a part of one, built in by a high brick wall, with a corredor 
running round two sides only. Here I saw still some debtors, 
though on recent notes there is now no liability to prison. 
One room was used as a chapel, having a meanly furnished al- 
tar, but at the same time it served as dormitory. This building- 
is the nightly resort of a detachment of presidarios, that are em- 
ployed during the day as scavengers, and in the burial of the 
poor, etc., always under the watch of soldiers. 

The prisons can hardly be alleged as a reproach to the gov- 
ernment. True, they are horrible, with the single exception of 
the Casa de Exclusion at Guaduas, but the authorities can not 
remedy the matter, though they would. The government is 



HYDROGRAPHIC NOTIONS. 235 

poor. It can not maintain suitable officers, nor can it furnish 
new buildings ; and with crowded rooms and low salaries, not 
Howard himself, were he alive, could keep a prison from being 
what that of Bogota emphatically is — a nuisance. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE VALLEY OF THE ORINOCO. 

Hydrography. — Paramo of Choachi. — Cordillera of Bogota and the Provinces on 
its Summit. — Eastern Wilderness. — Thermal Springs. — Indian Reserves. — 
Fortunate Priest. — His cunning Penitent. — Cordage Plant. — Laguna Grande. 
— Hid Treasures. — Murder of the Chibcha King. — Senor Quevedo. — Bolivar. 
— Joaquin Mosquera. — Rafael Urdaneta. — Domingo Caicedo. — Jose Maria 
Obando. — Francisco de Paulo Santander. — Six Administrations and three Re- 
bellions. — Murder and Mystery. — Sucre, Sarda, and Mariano Paris. — Une. — 
Paramo of Cruz Verde. — Rare Plants. 

I had seen plantains and oranges descending to Bogota by 
the steep roads that lead from the paramos. They do not grow 
there. Beyond there must be a warmer place, and I wished to 
see it. They told me I must go to Ubaque. To Ubaque I re- 
solved to go. But where could that be ? In the basin of the 
Orinoco ? I thought it hardly possible, and I asked a military 
gentleman. He assured me that its streams were tributaries to 
the Bogota. But he spoke of cane and plantains there, and 
when I suggested that water could not flow from a cane-field 
up to this cold plain, he admitted the difficulty. 

Bogota is on the very edge of the basin of the Orinoco. The 
hydrographic notions of the country have not been very exact, 
and much space that is supposed to be drained by the Magda- 
lena, in reality sends its waters, to the Orinoco. Most maps 
show the Bogota Chain, or Eastern Cordillera, as a well-mark- 
ed, straight ridge, running northeast. Mosquera's map puts Bo- 
gota half way between this ridge and the Magdalena, or even 
nearer the river. Tanner's map of Colombia, of 1829, the best 
yet extant, puts Lake Tota and the battle-field of Boyoca far 
west of the ridge. I had to close up his outlet of Lake Tota 
into the Sogamoso, and open with my pen a new one, the Upia, 
from the opposite end of the lake, and over a high mountain 



236 



NEW GRANADA. 



ridge into the Meta, and Orinoco. The map of Acosta, the 
best Granadan geographer that ever lived till Codazzi took that 
place, shows that same error. Lastly, another map puts Bogo- 
ta entirely east of the Andes, in the plains of the Orinoco ! 

In all my previous expeditions I wore boots. I now intro- 
duced my foot to a new chaussure, the alpargate or alpargata. 
Imagine a mat made of braided string of the exact size of the 
sole of the foot. The braid is first coiled in the proper shape, 
and then sewed by a long needle passing through the whole 
width from side to side. A woven cap is sewed on at the toe, 
although the very tip is left open, so that the extremity of the 
great toe is visible. At the heel a strap is fastened, so as to 
come up behind, and be held in place by a showy woven string 

that ties in front of the ankle. In 
the figure it is worn slipper-fash- 
ion, and to the practiced eye looks 
strange, with the leg of the panta- 
loons in such close proximity. 

The alpargate is the best pos- 
sible defense for the foot in walk- 
ing. It yields to the motions of 
the foot, lets it take hold of the 
"Were I ever to walk for my life, 
I should, if possible, walk in alpargatas. The price in Bogota 
is fifteen cents a pair, but in the Cauca they are both dearer and 
poorer. Still, I can not do without them. It is a significant 
circumstance, too, that I often find no pair large enough. I am 
not in the habit of looking much at feet, but all testimony goes 
to the point that this is a land of beautiful feet, and that, I sup- 
pose, means small feet. If so, the best proof that I can allege 
is to say that I never yet found one alpargate too large for me, 
although I can wear most gentlemen's slippers that I have had 
occasion to try. 

There are two other routes to Ubaque, but, as I like to take 
a circuit, we will, by your leave, go by Choachi. So first we 
pass the Boqueron, in which we have already spent much time, 
and pass through the amphitheatre we saw from Montserrate. 
A small venta stands just out of the Boqueron, and, as we. turn 
and look back, you agree with me that highway never penetrated 




ALPARGATE OR ALPARGATA. 

ground, and does not heat it. 



pAeamo de choachi. 237 

a more rugged defile. Were it within one hundred miles of New 
York instead of two miles from Bogota, it would be much fre- 
quented. Many ladies here have never passed it. Sublimity 
is at a discount here : there is too much of it. 

We rise continually by deep-worn roads, sometimes steep, 
but for considerable spaces nearly level. We left the San 
Francisco at the mouth of the Boqueron ; indeed, it is formed, 
there by streams coming in from all directions. What a lonely 
road ! It seems as if it were through a country that had been 
rejected, and very properly, as unfit for human residence. Now 
our path breaks into a dozen, and all bad ; now they concen- 
trate in a callejon so narrow as to render it difficult to let a poor 
woman pass you with a huge load of charcoal on her shoulders 
covered with frailejon leaves. 

We rise continually. We mark our progress by the mount- 
ains behind us, and particularly the Church of Montserrate. 
Now its top is seen no longer against the blue sky, but against 
the blue ridge on the opposite side of the plain. Now the frai- 
lejon becomes abundant, and vegetation assumes a more gloomy 
hue. Guadalupe, too, sinks, and the whole ridge that frowns 
over Bogota, with its head covered in angry clouds while we 
have pleasant weather below, has now subsided so as to allow 
us to see the plain over its highest peak, and far, far beyond, if 
clouds hide it not, the Quindio. And yet we rise. 

The last steep is gained, and before us what would be called 
rolling prairie stretches off miles to the east. At the beginning 
of this stands the first house on the road since we left the venta 
of the Boqueron — and such a miserable house ! A small in- 
closure here was devoted to potatoes or arracachas, but besides 
naught seemed to encourage the hopes of man. Siberia must 
be a paradise in comparison. Long and desolate was my jour- 
ney over the paramo of Choachi. And yet it scarcely deserves 
the name of paramo : it is too low and too warm. There were 
a number of houses, too ; but I am told that in bad weather the 
inhabitants must keep within doors. 

Why is this plain colder than those' of Africa? The sun 
strikes it as fairly. The air, nearly twice as rare, can not carry 
off the heat so fast. I confess that I know of no reason except 
that the surface is farther removed from the molten interior of 



238 NE W GRANADA. 

our planet, the chief source of our heat, which is aided less by 
the sun than we are apt to suppose. 

The under surface of our Northern snows melts in the spring, 
and the ground thaws before the rays of the sun reach it. The 
streams that descend from perpetual snows are, I suspect, sup- 
plied from its under surface. 

Still, it is to be expected that the temperature of even the 
lowest places in this country should be less than that justly due 
to their elevation, or, if you please, to the thickness of the crust 
on which they stand. Every breeze that fans the nook of Vijes 
from the west has left, not 20 minutes before, altitudes where 
you would shiver. If from the east, it may have been warming 
some two hours, and if from the south, much longer ; but even 
from the north, we can scarce get a puff that has not been play- 
ing around some peak that frost visits every night. Hence, if a 
man wants a specimen of the torrid zone, he can not find it in 
New Granada, and there must be many plants that could not 
live here except in hot-houses. Hence, too, a Granadan never 
has heard of a warm night. 

But this talk, though good for dog-days with my readers, is 
too cool a theme for the paramo of Choachi. Let us hasten on. 
There are some peaks above us that I should like to climb, but 
want of time and prudence alike forbid. If the paramo should 
get angry, "ponerse bravo," we should have fine times and fine 
fare in one of these desolate, tireless, windowless huts, even could 
we reach one. How still it is ! No birds come here. Insects 
have here no home. The very streams do not gurgle as they do 
below. This must be due to the rarity of the atmosphere. I 
drank of their waters at a natural bridge of a large flat stone, 
under which flowed a small mill-stream, a tributary to the Ori- 
noco. In an hour from Bogota we cross the " divide," though 
I had great difficulty to even learn the name for a hydrographic 
basin — lioyo — for intelligent men never had thought of one. 

In one of these hollows I passed a singular bush — any bush 
is singular here — but this had leaves as large as apple-leaves, 
white underneath, and of a pungent taste. It is the well-known 
Winter's bark — Drymis Winteri. It is not much used as a med- 
icine. It is called canelo, thus confounding it with cinnamon, 
which it might serve to adulterate, though it has only the 



CORDILLERA DE BOGOTA. 239 

pungency to excess, while the agreeable flavor is entirely want- 
ing. 

We approach the eastern edge of the paramo. I am amazed 
at the width of the mountain summit, and consider it the type 
of the whole Bogota chain. Entire provinces sit on the top of 
it, side by side, north of here, for in Velez, Socorro, Tunja, Tun- 
dama, and Pamplona, few important towns lie on either side 
down in the region of the cane. 

And this mountain top is the garden of New Granada and 
of all South America. Nowhere in America, except in some 
few of the United States, is there so dense a population as 
swarms in this sea of hills. They lack but the proper educa- 
tion to make them one of the best races on earth. The Socor- 
ranos are proverbially enterprising, and all of the inhabitants of 
the cold lands are constitutionally industrious. 

Nature has here been prodigal of her mineral wealth. Just 
north of the great Sabana are the mines of rock salt at Cipaqui- 
ra. A little farther on are the iron mines of Pacho. The em- 
eralds of the world come from Muzo and Somondoco. North 
of Muzo is the copper mine of Moniquira, and, lastly — to say 
nothing of tin, lead, and sulphur, none of which are systematic- 
ally extracted — the gold deposits of the. vicinity of Piedecuesta. 
But the most valuable of all mineral deposits is coal, and this, 
though perhaps less abundant than in England or Pennsylva- 
nia, is practically inexhaustible in the present condition of the 
nation. 

I look forward from the very eastern edge, where little crosses, 
erected in gratitude by those who had lived to toil up the steep 
ascent, stand thick around my feet ; or perchance some may be 
those of persons anxious about their descent, who prayed to 
reach the bottom with unbroken bones. If any expect here to 
see the plains, the boundless prairies of the Orinoco, he will 
be disappointed. You may consider them and the Magdalena 
to lie at about equal distances from here ; and so you see be- 
fore you a depth that the eye can not measure, and beyond 
it the mountains rising again, head over head, and you know 
not by sight that you have passed the summit-level of the Cor- 
dillera. 

How are these mountains occupied ? What are their names ? 



240 



NEW GRANADA. 



What towns are at their "base ? The mountains are unnamed, 
and useless to man. A few horrible paths thread past their 
base, but they are unknown to the traveler. The Orinoco and 
Amazon drain nearly one half of New Granada, but of its 
2,243,730 souls in the census of 1851, only 51,072 are ascribed 
to this region, besides that of some cold lands usually supposed 
to be drained into the Magdalena. Of these, 28,873 are in the 
cantones of San Martin and Caqueza, in the province of Bogota 
— the empire province, that extends from the Magdalena to 
the Orinoco ; 18,523 to the province of Casanare, and 3676 to 
the vast territories of San Martin and Mocoa, between which 
the law has not marked out the limits. 

And in all this vast space there are but seven post-offices. 
Here, then, we have a future world, the very edge of which 
only is occupied with a few civilized Indians. Caqueza, a good 
day's journey from Bogota (25 miles), is as far in as people often 
penetrate. All this side is sparse settlement ; all beyond is ef- 
fectively wilderness. 




HIDING IN A FILLOK. 



FAMILY JOUKNEYING. 241 

While pausing as if for a plunge, let us take a survey of a 
party just emerging from the depths beneath us, who have been 
stopping to adjust their dress to the climate on which they are 
entering. The principal figure, which a casual observer might 
regard as a heap of something carelessly laid on a mule, would, 
after unwrapping it like a mummy, be found to have for its nu- 
cleus a respectable and somewhat elegant lady of Bogota, though 
not at present in a condition for athletic exercises. ' Hence she 
has been condemned to make this expedition in a sillon — a con- 
veyance by no means so secure, except when a lady is clumsy, 
as the Turkish, or even the European. 

Her feet, you see, are on the contrary side from that which 
they occupy when she uses the side-saddle. The sillon is rich- 
ly ornamented with red morocco and silver, and is so cushioned 
as to be quite easy to the rider when going at the pace of an 
ox, but not probably as comfortable to the beast as a saddle. 
Behind follows her husband, bearing her first-born in his arms. 
The figure on foot puzzles me most. Clearly he is no Indian, 
and his hat is that of a gentleman ; but the load he bears, the 
pantaloons rolled up, and the alpargatas, indicate that for once 
he is taking resolutely a position to which he is not used. My 
solution is not a very charitable one, and it may not be true. 
It is this : they are a party that have been down to Choachi, or, 
perhaps, to Ubaque, to templar, which I translate thaw out. 
They have been gambling there, and have lost. They went 
down on four hired mules, with a carguero for the child, and 
come back as we see them, because they have need to retrench. 
One saddle and part of their luggage — equipaje — has been left 
for another opportunity — perhaps in pawn. This explains all 
we see. 

A descent of a hundred feet brings a material change of vege- 
tation. Here I came upon a splendid plant, that at first looked 
something like the trumpet-honeysuckle, with scarlet flowers 
three inches long. It proved to be an earth-growing Loranthus, 
a bush eight feet high. I afterward found, just east of the Bo- 
queron, a smaller species — L. Mutisii — with flowers six inches 
long; and I have seen another terrestrial species, with much 
smaller yellow flowers. A splendid Melastomate bush grows 
down here too, and farther down some tall trees of that Order 

Q 



242 NEW GKANADA. 

tantalized me with flowers for which I sighed in vain. This 
species has been published by Karsten and Triana as Codazzia 
rosea. Here, too, I incautiously seized on a large, handsome 
yellow flower, a Loasa, that stung like a wasp. 

Just before entering the woods, I stopped at a venta with 
some peasants that I had fallen in with. They opened a wallet 
and took out some provisions, and proceeded to lunch. One of 
them ventured to urge on me a delicate morsel, a piece of roast- 
ed crisp rind of pork, but I declined, assuring him that I was 
not in the least hungry. 

At the bottom I found a hot sulphur-spring. A stream ran 
from it into a little bathing-house, where also was led in a stream 
of cold water, so as to reduce the temperature till it could be en- 
dured. A considerable quantity of gas escaped from the spring, 
which I supposed to be carbonic acid. I had not even a ther- 
mometer with me, and can only say that it seems quite prob- 
able that the spring is hot enough to boil an egg in time. It is 
strange that this spring is not more known and resorted to as a 
watering-place ; but the Bogotanos love cold bathing, and would 
rather ice their water than heat it. 

On the Plain of Bogota are also thermal springs worthy of 
examination, but I did not even hear of them till too late to visit 
them. Those of Tabio, some twenty miles north of Bogota, 
have a temperature of 114°, while a stream flows near them with 
a temperature of 53°. There are also others at Suba, ten or 
fifteen miles north of the capital. 

From the spring, which was a little below the road, I pro- 
ceeded south to Choachi. This is a tolerable village, standing 
on a level spot on the side hill, but a mile or more from the 
roaring stream that flowed along the base. Both sides of this 
river are thickly settled with Indians. I have not seen so much 
cultivation in all this country, and the scene delighted me inex- 
pressibly. The district of Choachi contains 4691 inhabitants ; 
Ubaque, a little farther on, 3399 ; while on the other side of 
the stream, the district of Fomeque contains 6645. The amount 
of white blood in all this multitude is quite small. 

The land here has been kept in the hands of the Indians by 
a benevolent provision of the law, restraining them from selling 
except according to certain provisions ; but, with the advancing 



244 



NEW GRANADA. 




THE PENITENT. 245 

ideas of liberty, it is seen that it is undemocratic to restrain 
thus a man's liberty. The matter is now with the provincial 
Legislatures, and in some provinces these reserves — resguardas 
— can be sold only at auction, and in others, any man that can 
persuade one of these thoughtless aborigines to sell to him can 
buy at any price, however small. It grieves me to hear that 
large numbers have sold. Among the most diligent buyers of 
resguardas is the Cura of Choachi, who is now the owner of land 
that once was occupied by a score of families. 

I was talking with one of his flock, and mischievously asked 
what kind of a mistress the priest kept, and the simpleton, with- 
out any apparent surprise at the question, told me that she was 
very pretty. And yet, I think, it is of this place that they tell 
me of a 'cute trick at the confessional. An Indian was going 
to confess, and his unlawful companion accompanied him as far 
as a certain cross, where he desired her to await his return. So 
our priest, who disliked concubinage, as it diminished his mar- 
riage-fees, asks him, 

" Are you married ?" 

"No, senor." 

" Do you live with a woman ?" 

" I have lived with one, senor, but I have left her as far back 
as the cross." 

Now by The Cross the priest understood their festival of 3d 
May, which had elapsed so long that he thought proper to let by- 
gones be, bygones, and Jose got off with quite a light penance. 
The matter being squared up to mutual satisfaction, he return- 
ed to " the cross," rejoined his companion, and they went home. 

Choachi is by no means a pretty place. The houses are all 
of one story, and thatched ; and if any of them are casas clau- 
stradas, still they appear more like four huts placed corner to 
corner than a regular house. The Plaza is small, and I think 
I would much prefer to reside on the opposite slope. Still, the 
vicinity of the thermal spring, and other causes, make it some- 
thing of a watering-place. On the opposite page is exhibited 
the most successful imitation of European costumes and cus- 
toms that I have ever heard of. That all these six figures, clad 
in imported articles exclusively, could have ever been met in one 
day, exceeds my belief. With such care has every thing na- 



246 NEW GRANADA. 

tional been banished, that I am tempted to think that they them- 
selves have been imported to order packed in sawdust. 

To me there is much more interest in the two remaining fig- 
ures. The Indian woman, who is selling Granadillas to them, 
is seated behind an empty cage to sell fowls from. Her way of 
wearing her mantellina, hanging loosely down her back, shows 
her a reinosa or uplander. The term New Kingdom of Grana- 
da did not at first include the coasts, and a kingdom-man is 
now used as the opposite of calentano, or inhabitant of the Ti- 
erra Caliente. But the person that interests me most is that 
boy on his way from Fomeque to Bogota. He too carries fowls, 
and some other articles for sale, protected by a goat-skin, also 
for sale. He has taken off his hat to say Sacramento del altar 
to the grand folks, who are too busy scrutinizing the Granadil- 
las even to see him. 

He wears under his hat a handerchief bound on his head. A 
heavy ruana and a camisa protect part of his body. Then comes 
a pair of scant zamarras, that have perhaps some pantaloons un- 
der them still more scant, while his ankles and insteps must take 
all risks that offer themselves. The sole only of the foot is pro- 
tected by the albarca of hide, far inferior to the alpargate ex- 
cept in mud. It is not often so well secured as here we see it. 
Generally a toe is thrust through a loop made for it, and it is 
slightly fastened at the heel. 

At Choachi I left the main road, and ascended among the 
fields until it was again quite cold. Here I was under the ne- 
cessity of asking the way at a rancho. It consisted of two roofs 
and a gable, while the end toward the north was open as door 
and window. Quite a number of happy-looking Indian girls 
seemed to be at work within. They were employed on the fibre 
of Fourcroya, a plant too important to be passed by. It is fre- 
quently called aloe and century plant. But the century plant 
is not an Aloe, but Agave Americana, while this plant is neither 
Aloe nor Agave. Like the Agave, the Fourcroya is a slow- 
growing plant, with leaves three or four feet long, five inches 
wide, and half an inch thick. After vegetating in this way for 
years, it shoots up a flower-stem ten or twenty feet high, gen- 
erally sheds from it abortive flowers and bulbs, and then dies. 

This plant is called mague, cabuya, and fique. The pith of 



GRANADAN CORDAGE. 247 

the huge flower-stem, often six inches in diameter, is used as 
tinder after the ends of the fibres have been once scorched. 
From the leaves is extracted a fibre resembling that which is 
called Manilla-grass. The long leaves are split, and two hard 
sticks, held close together on opposite sides of a piece, scrape 
away the epidermis and parenchyma, leaving nothing but the 
strong white fibres of the length of the leaf. No other appara- 
tus is used in the manufacture. It is twisted into cords and 
ropes, knit into bags (guambias, mochilas, and talegas), or braid- 
ed into alpargate stuff. It might, were articles of commerce 
needed, supply a large quantity from dry knolls, useless other- 
wise except for pasture. I suspect that it could be nearly pre- 
pared for use by simply passing it once through a close pair of 
iron rollers. 

The Fourcroya is an Amarillate plant. The finer and more 
costly fibre, called pita, is said to be from a Bromeliate plant, 
of which I never have seen the working of the leaf, nor yet the 
flower ; and from the leaves of the prince of the Bromeliate fam- 
ily, the pine-apple, a still finer fibre is now found in our North- 
ern cities in the form of most costly handkerchiefs. 

Well, these poor Indian girls, on the shoulder of the mount- 
ain, separated from Bogota only by a few miles of steep rock 
and paramo, were twisting cabuya in that low, miserable rancho. 
They were evidently alarmed at the sudden appearance of a for- 
eigner at the mouth of their den, and were quite relieved when 
I informed them that I wanted to know the direction of Laguna 
Grande, nothing more. True, they suffer far less outrage from 
the Spaniards than they would from the more brutal outlaws of 
the Anglo-Saxon race, but they are less protected by law there 
than they would be in those Northern States where the testi- 
mony of an Indian is received in courts. Poor race ! In Dan- 
te's Hell they should be employed in the exclusive work of tor- 
turing conquerors and legislators. 

I had risen to the foot of the ledge that has the earthy land 
above Bogota on the west side, the paramo on its broad top, 
and cultivable slopes extending on the east side far down to 
the river below me. I followed along still south till directly 
before me was an abrupt descent to a basin nearly filled with 
many acres of water, black, still, and cold as death. Lake 



248 NEW GRANADA. 

A vermis in summer must be smiling in comparison, but in a 
bleak Italian December they must be as like as twins. No 
summer ever smiles on Laguna Grande. A perennial autumn, 
with its alternate sun, mist, and storm, have reigned here from 
the day of creation till now. It has a fringe of bushes, with 
quaking marsh within, and a centre that is said to be unfathom- 
able. No singing-bird has ever discovered this retreat, and, but 
for the chill-loving disposition of these Andine Highlanders, the 
Eeinosos, man never would have found it. 

What a fine place for traditions! I mentally exclaimed. 
Was there ever a place more apropos to spirits and genii, or to 
hidden treasures ? So full of tins idea was I that my first ques- 
tion to some friends I met below was, "Are there no hidden 
treasures at the bottom of that pond ?" 

" They say that there is wealth incalculable there, Senor," 
was the reply. " It is said that, on an annual festival, the Zipa, 
or chief, went out to the centre of Laguna Grande in a boat, 
wearing a rich array of gold and emeralds, and during the cere- 
monies he took them off one by one, and dropped them into the 
water." 

" And has there been no attempt to recover them ?" 
" It has often been projected, but never attempted." 
But, besides the treasures thus thrown in for glory, there is 
equal probability of others thrown there for spite. In 1538 or 
1539 died, near Bogota, Zaquesazipa, last Zipa of the Muiscas, 
" with extraordinary fevers — calenturas." These calenturas — 
burnings — are supposed to have referred to the applications of 
heated horse-shoes to his feet, and other similar torments, by 
Quesada the Conqueror, Hernan Perez his brother, Suarez 
(Rendon), and Garcia (Zorro). The object was to make him 
tell what had become of the treasures of his cousin Tisquesusa, 
whose kingdom he had usurped when Quesada murdered him. 
These treasures never have been recovered, if they ever existed, 
and, if thrown to utter destruction, were most probably buried 
beneath these black, still waters ; but this is not probable, for 
hiding-places on land may answer the utmost desires of con- 
cealment. 

Now, as I am writing, it occurs to me, for the first time, to 
inquire whether this deep hole be the crater of a volcano. It is 



UBAQUE. 249 

on a side liill that might be called steep. North and west of 
the laguna the ground rises as steep as a man can easily climb. 
To the east the ground rises slightly for a few rods to a height 
of not more than ten feet, I should judge, above the level of the 
water, and then falls rapidly. I can think of no possible theory 
to account for its origin except this, but I did not notice any 
evidence there of any other than a sandstone formation. 

Two or three huts of Indians, who keep some rather cross 
dogs, stand near the lake. Want of time, and the expectation 
of a future return to the pond prevented my observing with the 
care I now wish I had used. 

A steep, long walk brought me down to Ubaque. It is quite 
a collection of poor houses just above the upper limit of the 
cane. It is one of the watering-places of Bogota. Though 
inferior to many others, it is perhaps the most accessible. I 
confess I would rather go down to where the cane-boiling fur- 
naces are smoking in the valley below, for here it is yet much 
too cold to suit me. The Plaza occupies nearly all the level 
ground there is, and the houses on the one side are crowded 
against the hill, and the ground descends steep behind those on 
the other. A noisy torrent, cold enough to make one's teeth 
chatter in half a minute, tears down to the river below, and 
makes a deliciously cool bath, which the Bogotanos enjoy for 
half an hour at a time. I was glad to get out of it in the least 
possible time, and would as lief be buried naked in a snow-bank 
as to venture in it again. 

I here became the guest of an excellent family of Venezola- 
nos, the Quevedos. Senor Quevedo is an officer of the War of 
Independence, living in Bogota on his savings, his half-pay, or 
by his musical talents. I am sorry to come to such a conclu- 
sion, but I am led to regard this and another Venezolano family, 
that of Colonel Codazzi, as the two most interesting I have 
found in Bogota. It is perhaps because I understand them 
best, or they know best how to make me at home. I think, 
too, that there are few ladies in New Granada better educated 
than some in these two families. 

Senor Quevedo is an enthusiastic admirer of Bolivar. I am 
happy to come to nearly the same conclusions with himself in 
the main, but I would like to know more than I can well ascer- 



250 NEW GEANADA. 

tain about his concessions to the priesthood. I can not con- 
sider him, however, as actuated by a base love of power. And 
when Joaquin Mosquera was elected to his place, I do not re- 
gard it as a wise step, and fear that there may be meaning in 
the hint of Samper, that the "youth — -juventud (tfhoys?) — of 
Bogota" had more to do with the matter of superseding Bolivar 
than they Ought. We may well suppose that the old hero 
sighed at leaving the reins in hands all too weak to hold them. 
I can not think that Bolivar had any thing to do with the 
revolution in which Urdaneta, after the battle of Santuario at 
Puente Grande, September, 1830, drove out the feeble adminis- 
tration. Rafael Urdaneta, a good subaltern general, was never 
called to be the supreme head of a nation, and his rebellion was 
an immense mischief, without other motive that I can guess than 
personal ambition. Little good did it do him or his faction, as 
in nine months, 15th May, 1831, he was as easily driven out as 
his predecessor. 

What became of Joaquin ? He seems to have had enough 
of the executive, and in the short space from the retirement of 
Bolivar, we find the supreme power in the hands of President 
Mosquera till September, 1830 ; Dictator Urdaneta till the 15th 
of May, 1831 ; Vice-president Domingo Caicedo till December, 
1831 ; Obando till March, 1833, when the Convention that form- 
ed the first Constitution of New Granada by itself, in 1832, 
made Santander, then an exile for his share in the conspiracy 
of 1828, the first President of the new republic. 

Santander was a good president. So I believe from the 
charges against him by Samper, all of which I think redound 
to his credit. Especially would I commend to future govern- 
ments his energy with the Sarda conspirators. Sarda had no 
other motives than ambition or fanaticism. Many of the con- 
spirators were seized, and Sarda andMariano Paris, who escaped, 
were outlawed, a proceeding that might be with advantage in- 
troduced at the North, were we not so tender with criminals. 
I, for one, think they deserve no more protection than our other 
citizens. Paris was caught and shot, under plea that he was 
likely to escape. Sarda was assassinated at night, in a house 
where he was hid, by Jose Ortiz, a lieutenant in the army, who 
was not openly rewarded nor brought to trial. Sixteen of the 



ADMINISTRATION OF MARQUEZ. 251 

others were executed. This was in 1833, and six years seem 
to haye passed without another conspiracy. Had Obando and 
Lopez been treated in the same way, perhaps Herran, Mosquera, 
and Arboleda never would have been found in arms against 
their own country. 

But as there are few active men in New Granada that have 
not been at some time engaged in a revolution, they have be- 
come exceedingly tender on that point. It is now settled that 
neither death nor the penitentiary are to be the penalty for re- 
bellion any more, but only banishment, without confiscation of 
goods, till politics change. But the latest improvement pro- 
posed is this, that when an officer is banished for turning his 
arms against the authority he has sworn to support, his pay 
should be continued to him ! 

Now this is all nonsense. Take every general, and of other 
officers all who have commanded detachments at five hours' 
distance from a superior ; hang one and shoot the rest. Cash- 
ier for cowardice all other officers. Imprison with hard labor 
all the LL.D.'s and priests (the latter for life) clearly proved in 
it, and the next revolution will be the last. 

Jose Ignacio Marquez,LL.D., who was elected President by 
Congress on 4th March, 1837, was also, I believe, a good presi- 
dent. He is charged with not being rabid enough, and with 
having taken no steps toward Red Republicanism. It is said 
also that, being elected Vice-president for four years from March, 
1835, it was unconstitutional to make a president of him. 

The rebellion of 1839 began in Pasto, in consequence of the 
suppression of some convents, a fact that indicates that the Mar- 
quez administration was not entirely inert. Pasto is said to be 
the most elevated valley in the world, and, if not the most beau- 
tiful, is perhaps the most rebellious. The Pastusos are ignorant 
and very Christian. Their nearest market is by carrying pota- 
toes, etc., over horrible roads, on their backs, seven days' march 
to Barbacoas. But when they are so fortunate as to be invad- 
ed, the camp of the enemy is the best home market they can 
ever have, to say nothing of the privilege of robbing travelers 
between Bogota and Quito. Thus, with them, peace and pros- 
perity never come together. 

Samper maintains that the Marquez administration wished 



252 NEW GRANADA. 

the rebellion to become as serious as possible. This I regard 
as simply absurd. 

Another cause of the revolution was Obando. General Sucre, 
marshal of Ayacucho, was shot in the woods of the Berruecos, 
in Pasto, in open day, on the 4th June, 1830, in the time of Bo- 
livar. The mystery of that affair probably never will be solved. 
It may have been only the work of his wife and her paramour, 
General Isidoro Barriga. But the deed was rumored in Bogota 
soon after poor Sucre started from there, and was anticipated in 
Popayan as he passed there ; and a picket of cavalry, sent, it 
is supposed, by General Juan Jose Florez, afterward president 
of Ecuador, and lastly pirate, is said to have come from Ecuador 
secretly, traveling by night, and to have returned after his death. 
Lastly, Colonel Apolinar Morillo, once a robber and afterward a 
tool of Obando's, was arrested for the crime, convicted, confessed 
it, said Obando ordered the act, and was executed. 

Thus rumor knew it beforehand ; causes sufficient for the se- 
cret commission of the crime are known ; a public cause from a 
quarter opposite the rumor is found; scores of men, that knew of 
the deed before and after it was done, confess to dozens of 
priests ; and, lastly, the very man who did the deed tells us all 
about it, and how Obando, and perhaps Lopez, instigated him, 
Sarria, and Erazo to it ; and yet the truth never will be known ! 

I give here a strange and incredible story, that will show bet- 
ter than a dozen pages of dissertation the difficulty of unravel- 
ing political mazes here. Archbishop Herran was said to have 
been Morillo's confessor before his execution. His sister-in-law, 
daughter of General Mosquera and wife of General Herran (then 
a mere girl), is said to have visited the criminal frequently (prob- 
ably an unfounded lie). He was convicted by perjury, and prom- 
ised pardon if he would confess the deed and avow Obando's 
agency in it. This he was to do on the shooting-bench (ban- 
quillo), and be pardoned there. He went there, accompanied by 
the prelate, told his lie, received the last rites of the Church, the 
confessor stepped away, and instead of the pardon came the 
dread word, Fire ! and Morillo spoke no more. And there is 
many a brain here so fevered with political hate as to believe all 
this, and to believe it without evidence. 

All ■political offenses up to June, 1830, were included in an 



EEVOLUTION OF 1840. 253 

amnesty of the Constitutional Convention in 1832. Besides, it 
was a crime against the laws of Colombia, and New Granada 
had no right to punish it when Colombia ceased to exist. So, 
when Obando was summoned to trial in 1839, Samper regards it 
as a persecution, because Obando had been Santander's preferred 
candidate for president after him, and was now mentioned again 
for the next canvass. He complained of unfairness in trial. He 
fled. He returned to take up arms against his country in the 
wilds of Pasto and Popayan, where half his life had been spent 
in scenes of blood. 

Ambition, federalism, and minor discontents made the matter 
worse in 1840. So many governors turned traitors that the 
revolution has been called El Revolucion de los Gobernadores. 
It is difficult to count the battles that were fought, the blood 
and treasure spent. But for the talents and energy of Mosque- 
ra, then Minister of War, and General Herran, the debility of 
Marquez would have yielded to the combination of adverse cir- 
cumstances ; but the party in power triumphed at Culebrera on 
28th October, 1840, almost on the very spot, at Puente Grande, 
where Joaquin Mosquera lost his power ten years before. The 
action of Tescua, near Pamplona, 1st April, 1841, and some skir- 
mishes on the coast, were the last of this unhappy rebellion. 

Of course, the life-sparing Samper, who would not have an out- 
law killed to prevent a battle, makes a great outcry at the sever- 
ity visited on the leaders of the rebellion. Mosquera and Her- 
ran had never then been rebels themselves, and took more lives 
than they would again. I can not say I think them too many, if 
only well chosen, which Samper, of course, thinks they were not. 

Now my worthy Venezolano host must not be held responsi- 
ble for all these sentiments as I give them. I have not im- 
plicitly followed his views, though I know of no man's that are 
safer ; I have made much subsequent inquiry upon them, and 
have conversed with Obando himself on the assassination of Su- 
cre. About that I am completely puzzled. 

I wished very much to visit Fomeque. Its white church, its 
apparently scant village, and its hundreds of well-tilled little 
farms, more in number than I had seen before in all New Gran- 
ada, were a temptation to me almost beyond my power of re- 
sistance. But I had made no preparations for such a journey, 



254 NEW GEANADA. 

so I reluctantly abandoned all hope of seeing Fomeque and Ca- 
queza, and at early dawn took a cup of chocolate and set out on 
my return. 

We crossed the stream that runs south of the town, and as- 
cended through a wide gorge to Pueblo Viejo, a neighborhood of 
scattered houses, that I suspect bears the legal name of Distrito 
of Une. At the last of these houses, the most western farm in 
the valley of the Orinoco, I stopped to breakfast. The mate- 
rials for this meal had been brought from Ubaque, but some ex- 
changes were made with the three interesting proprietresses of 
the house, who, now a little in years, were carrying on their neat 
farm by hiring. I left them really with regret, and beg the 
reader, if he ever go from Cruz Verde to Pueblo Viejo, to turn 
off to the first house a little south of the road that he finds on 
cultivable ground. 

Soon I was toiling up the steep ascent, and in the far east 
other hills were rising from behind those that at Ubaque served 
as a background to the farms of Fomeque. Here I met a bar- 
berry — a real barberry — but not sour, and, in fact, uneatable. I 
doubt not that it was Berberis glauca. I had been long won- 
dering why none of this genus were to be found. I found an- 
other as I descended toward the west, and still another, all that 
I have ever seen in New Granada, just before the last descent to 
Bogota. This first one had the leaves very white beneath, and 
here too I was struck with the general color of the woods. They 
were gray. Lichens on the bark, the foliage, the flowers on the 
trees, all seemed to contribute to the most peculiar and the light- 
est shade of color I ever saw in a landscape densely filled with 
vegetable life. I had noticed this in descending from the para- 
mo of Choachi, but in a less degree. In descending to Fusa- 
gasuga I noticed it more strongly than any where else. 

Just at the foot of the last arduous ascent I found that I had 
lost or left my knife. It was some miles back that I had last 
used it. It was impossible to designate to my attendant where 
I had probably left it, nor could I rely on getting another. No 
alternative was left me but to retrace my steps for even the 
chance of finding it (I had met several persons), but I succeed- 
ed. It was a dear purchase, though this long space, which 
yielded little to man but charcoal, was nearly level. I thus 



PARAMO OF CRUZ VERDE. 255 

passed two or three miserable lonely houses, almost without cul- 
tivation around them, three times in three hours. 

Now came the last dire ascent of half a mile, much of it as 
steep as the stairs in Bunker Hill Monument. Now we come 
to the top, where the ground is thickly planted with crosses. 
They stand at the top of every such steep in this part of New 
Granada, and are often your first notice of a horrible descent. 
The air up here is dreadfully chill, though the sun shines bright. 
With a mist and a fierce wind in the face, this paramo of Cruz 
Verde is really dangerous, though but a little way across. 

In a marsh on the paramo I found two little flowers, neither 
an inch high. I set about gathering them, and desired my serv- 
ant to aid me, but the poor fellow was so cruelly treated by the 
wind and cold that he soon gave in, and sat down in the warm- 
est place he could find. I did not blame him for not relishing 
entering the mud with wet fingers and feet, with the wintry blast 
howling round him, for such insignificant weeds, of which a 
hundred — an hour's work — would not weigh an ounce. I pick- 
ed here, too, some Lycopodiums, and what I thought might be 
Selago among them. It was destined to astonish me when I 
found it to be Alchemilla nivalis, a Rosate plant ! It was bul 
a single specimen and out of flower. As Aragoa abietina grows 
just west of the paramo, it well deserves a day from the botanist. 

A little while after leaving the paramo, a chasqui overtook 
us. He was a runner, a bearer of dispatches from some official 
at the east, perhaps to the governor in Bogota. He had left 
or passed Ubaque late in the morning, and was now pressing on, 
so that, had we not quickened our steps to four miles or more 
an hour, he would have passed us easily. These chasquies used 
to serve without pay, if they do not still, and an appointment to 
this " onerous office" was sometimes an intimation of some offi- 
cial to his enemy that he had not forgotten him. At length I 
fell upon some plant I must collect, and the chasqui, who de- 
layed not a step, disappeared at a turn of the road. 

I stepped into a miserable cottage to screen me from the wind 
while I put my plants into paper. From the shape of my pack- 
age, they supposed that I had saints (pictures) for sale. A few 
cheap colored lithographs of "Mary," and "Ellen," "Rose," 
&c, would be invaluable presents to this poor people. They 



256 NEW GRANADA. 

lead a miserable life, being many of them wood-sellers. They 
clo not cultivate much, probably because it takes some months 
before they gain any thing from their labor, and they know not 
how to look forward so long. 

Sometimes the ground was slippery for rods with water ; in 
places, the road was the bed of a brook, and we crossed some 
rivulets on round stones. Now the ground at our left assumes 
the appearance of a steep valley, where these waters gather and 
descend to the plain, which bursts upon our sight just here. 
This is the Rio Fucha, which below serves as a bathing-place 
to the Bogotanos and Bogotanas, where it is seen on the Plan 
of Bogota at in. 

The sun is fast descending, and so are we; he beyond the 
Quindio mountains, and we to Las Craces, the southern church 
in Bogota. We have passed over unnoticed the last part of the 
way, for we have seen it in a previous chapter. And now, good 
reader, you, as well as I, would willingly rest. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

CONGRESS, CONSTITUTIONS, INSTITUTIONS, AND WEATHEE. 

Congress Halls. — Opening of Congress. — Audience. — Constitutions of 184:3 and 
1853. — Defect of the latter. — Finances. — Descentralizacion. — Mint. — Mails. 
— Provincial Schools. — Colegio Militar. — Observatory. — Caldas. — Hoyo del 
Aire. — Schools and Studies. — Manufactories. — The dependent Classes. — 
Weather, Temperature, etc., of Bogota. 

Congress meets as soon as the festivities of Christmas and 
New Year are over. The plan of the ceremonies is nearly based 
on our own. I had the pleasure of witnessing the opening on 
one occasion. The heads of departments (ministros), who have 
a voice in the House, have seats there, and were present. The 
message was ready printed, and, at the proper time, when each 
house had chosen its president, and the message had been read, 
copies of it were distributed to the members. One little pecu- 
liarity of their ceremonies is to place the military of the capital 
(generally some hundreds of troops) at the disposal of the pres- 
idents of the two houses. 



CONGRESS. 257 

The halls are one enormous room, nearly divided into two by 
a partition. The western end, farthest from the front, is for the 
Senate. A gallery runs round the whole except the western 
end, and the space not under the gallery is railed off for the use 
of the members. Speaking places (tribunos), like pulpits, are 
provided, but not used except in set speeches. The north gal- 
lery, the east, and the east half of the south is open to all, and 
also the space beneath, so that the Chamber of Representatives 
is surrounded on three sides by the spectators. But the south 
of the Senate is reserved, and over the President's chair there 
is no gallery, so that the Senate is exposed to observation only 
on the north side. Ladies with tickets, foreign ministers, and 
some officials have access to the reserved gallery, which extends 
a little way into the House of Representatives. 

The spectators are called the barra. Their conduct is out- 
rageous, often disturbing the proceedings with cries and insults 
against some of the members, and always with impunity. It 
would be a happy thing for the nation if a new capital could be 
selected west of Cipaquira or Muzo, where there could not be a 
large city. If that is impossible, the English system must be 
resorted to of admitting to the House only by ticket. I saw 
little of Congress, for the very reason that it was disagreeable — 
perhaps it is undemocratic to avow it — to mingle with such a 
rabble. One member, I was told, could not speak without be- 
ing taunted with a petty theft he had once been charged with. 

I may as well speak here of the Constitution. That of 1843 
was so long a document that I never had a chance to read it ; 
it is, in fact, a treatise on politics. For changes, it was requisite 
that one Congress should pass them, and that another, chosen 
certain months after their publication, should confirm them. 
Congress made an entirely new Constitution in 1851, and, I be- 
lieve, a very good one. It was not before 1853 that it could 
be sanctioned. That Congress made so many changes in it 
that it might be called an entirely new one ; but they voted 
that it was the old one, and that it was constitutionally adopt- 
ed. No man, as I know, in the whole nation disputed its valid- 
ity, and most hailed it as the advent of " the true republic" — 
a thing that seems to all of them like a millennium, always at 
hand, but, alas ! never yet seen. 

R 



258 NEW GRANADA. 

The crowning defect of the Constitution of 1853 is that the 
executive is too weak. It has no veto. An objected bill has 
but to pass both houses a second time. The patronage of the 
executive is very limited, and no power is left it that could have 
been taken from it. 

The next most fatal defect is that the two houses of Congress 
are not a sufficient check upon each other. Six persons are 
voted for on the same ballot for Congress. The highest six are 
elected : the first is Senador ; the second and third, Diputados ; 
the fourth, Senador suplente ; fifth and sixth, Diputados suplen- 
tes. All hold their office for but one year. If the two houses 
disagree on a bill, they meet together as one, and the majority 
carries every thing. Here is no element of stability. The most 
astounding changes are ventured on with little hesitation, and 
every thing can be as easily reversed next year. Three times 
has the entire system of weights and measures been changed: 
that of the French has now been adopted for the second time. 
Important changes in the number of provinces are made contin- 
ually ; new ones are erected, and then again suppressed. Each 
new whim of the nation will carry in a Congress that scorns to 
look to its predecessors for wisdom. Though there, is a party 
called Conservador, the conservative spirit is entirely unknown 
in all the nation, so I have no hopes of any stability under the 
new Constitution of 1853. 

The highest story of the great house in which Congress meets 
has the Treasury offices at the northern end. The Ministro de 
Hacienda, its head, Senor Jose Maria Plata, is a good man, but 
he has a terrible task. The treasury is in a state of perennial 
bankruptcy — all the effect of bad legislation and revolutions. 
The last remedy of this was Descentralizacion. It was a 
happy idea of assigning to the provinces a small part of the rev- 
enues and a large part of the expenses for them to manage just 
as they could. This measure was called for because the nation 
is opposed to all indirect taxation, and direct taxation Jby na- 
tional officers is nearly impossible in such a country. 

Of indirect taxes the first important one abolished was the 
alcabala, or a percentage on all sales. The last was the monop- 
oly of tobacco. Those now remaining are salt, spirits, stamps, 
peaje or toll, and customs. Spirits, and peaje, and the old ec- 



MINT AND MAILS. 259 

clesiastical taxes of tithes and first-fruits, have teen passed over 
to the provinces ; most of them have abolished the excise on 
spirits and ecclesiastical taxes. 

Senor Plata has been in correspondence with me on coinage. 
We find that the silver real is a little heavier than the new dime, 
while the gold condor is somewhat lighter than the double eagle. 
He at length decided to recommend the slight changes necessa- 
ry to make our coins identical. The silver is now identical with 
that of France, and is a tender for all sums. Consequently, the 
gold is bought and sold at varying prices. 

The Secretary of Finance (Hacienda) has the charge of the 
whole matter of mails. A ^priori, I should expect this to be the 
worst managed post of the whole administration. To my admira- 
tion, it is the best. It is far more wisely adapted to their condi- 
tion than ours is to us at the North, and is not susceptible of any 
radical improvement. Despite of barbarism and barbarous roads, 
there are comparatively few irregularities, and the losses very 
few, and all borne by government. The department not only 
supports itself, but yields a revenue. 

Most of the mails are weekly each way : the rest are twenty- 
six a year. The offices are few, not over 150. The mode of 
conveyance is left at the option of the contractor, but in many 
places the mail must always be carried on men's shoulders. On 
better roads, mules carry cubical trunks, called balijas. They 
are covered with (tanned) leather. Cargas are not to exceed 220 
pounds. Correristas may not carry things to traffic in, and their 
bundles are searched to prevent it. The Indian is born a com- 
mercial traveler, for within a few hours of him many things may 
vary 50 or 100 per cent, in price. Hence this needful pre- 
caution. 

The hours of arrival and leaving every office are fixed by de- 
cree, and each post-master — Administrador de Correos — must 
state the hour on the way-bill, and actually see him off. Their 
regulations to secure suitable correristas are different from ours. 
Theirs permit a negro to carry the mail, but would take it from 
a drunken man, and imprison him. Ours are satisfied if he 
is a white man, and it matters less if he be drunk or sober. 
Indeed, I doubt if nine tenths of their carriers would not be pro- 
hibited by the laws of our glorious Union from serving in that 



260 NEW GRANADA. 

capacity, and yet, incomprehensibly enough (I am ashamed to 
admit it), their department is served far better than ours. 

When I came up the Magdalena there were two steam-boat 
companies on the river. In the Santa Marta Company the na- 
tion has an interest, but' it was too poor to buy one in the oth- 
er. A system of canoes and bogas for mails is provided on the 
river independent of both, but when the Santa Marta boats over- 
take a mail, they must take it in. The others, in self-defense, 
are obliged to refuse to do so. We left one behind us so in the 
Barranquilla, but it afterward passed us as easily when we were 
in the champan. The nation has the power to require all boats 
to take a mail at a fixed price, or even gratis, if it chooses. It 
would do a real service to the country should it require fixed 
starting days for at least one weekly steamer each way, and for- 
bid any irregular steamer from starting just in advance of the 
packets. The uncertainty of meeting boats is a great obstacle 
to travel here. 

One important peculiarity of the mail system here is what 
are called encomiendas. We have no bank-notes, and if we re- 
mit, it must be in coin. Gold dust, emeralds, sample cards, 
etc., are sent in this way, and once, I believe, I saw even a sad- 
dle-tree thus mailed. I once sent a horse by mail — a live horse! 
Its head was securely tied to the tail of the mail-horse at the 
beginning and end of the journey : I know not which horse car- 
ried the balijas the most. I had a ruana once sent by encomi- 
enda from Bogota to Cartago. It is supposed to have left Bogo- 
ta at 2 P.M. of Wednesday by mule, and Ibague at 10 A.M. of 
Saturday by a human carrier — carguero — and to have arrived 
at Cartago at 6 P.M. of Tuesday. Travelers rarely pass this 
space in less than a fortnight. 

The identical coin committed to encomienda is paid out. 
Bills of exchange, drafts, etc., are unknown. No fear of loss is 
entertained. Not one mail-robbery per year occurs. A peon, 
wretchedly poor, carries it through a wilderness where it is 126 
hours from office to office (Popayan to Pasto) ; an Indian takes 
it 125 hours' journey to the next office (Pasto to Mocoa): both 
know that their heavy load is mostly money, but they neither 
think of robbing or being robbed. Never mind : they are bar- 
barians, and their very color would be a legal bar in our happier 



NAMES. 261 

land to their being placed in such temptations. We ought to 
send them missionaries to Christianize them. 

The rates of postage are high, and that is more excusable in 
a country where so few write letters. A letter from one place 
to another in the same province pays ten cents per half ounce ; 
beyond the bounds of the province it is fifteen. Books under 
four ounces, newspapers, seeds, and grafts go free. The rates 
for encomiendas vary according to value and distance. 

One word of advice as to foreign mails. There is nominally 
a mail connection at Panama between the United States and 
New Granada, and you can pay through. Do no such thing, 
unless you wish to lose both money and letter, as I have done. 
To get letters to New Granada, get them on board some ship 
that will touch at a Granadan port, and let them be mailed there. 
To get them from here, arrange with some consul. That model 
of a consul, Mr. Sanchez, of Cartagena, is full of good works of 
this kind toward entire strangers. I have been under similar 
obligations to an unknown consul at Panama; but trust not 
the United States mail at Panama unless in the last extremity. 
I would sooner trust the cook of a schooner bound to Santa 
Marta, Sabanilla, or Cartagena. 

Granadan travelers are often embarrassed by the importance 
of Christian names — nombres — and the little account made of 
surnames — apellidos. Women do not change their surname 
when they marry, but may connect the husband's to it by a de : 
thus, when Senor Barriga married Dolores Fuertes, she became 
Dolores Fuertes de Barriga. Their son Jose may write his 
name simply Jose Barriga, or Jose Barriga Fuertes, or Jose Ba- 
rriga y Fuertes. I prefer Jose" Barriga (Fuertes). 

In the letter-list the Christian names are arranged in alpha- 
betical order, and Honorable John Smith must seek his name 
under the letter H, John Smith, Esq., under J, and Mr. Smith, 
under M and S. Had he forewarned all his correspondents to 
direct to Juan Smith invariably, he would have saved both him- 
self and the officials much trouble. Directed to Don Juan el 
Ingles, they would be surer of reaching him than by any possi- 
ble direction in a United States post-office. 

The gobernacion of the province of Bogota is in the oppo- 
site end of the Casa Consistorial. The Gobernador, Pedro Gu- 



262 NEW GRANADA. 

tierrez (Lee), is an intelligent, efficient official. His mother's 
name seems to have been English. Padre Gutierrez, his fa- 
ther, is the excellent Cura of Las Nieves. 

Among other favors due to the governor was an introduction 
to the Colegio de la Merced. The reader will be glad to ac- 
company me there, as we shall find no other like it. It is in 
the extinct and spacious convent of the Capuchins, at the begin- 
ning of the Alameda, just north of the Plaza de San Victorino. 
I knocked at the door, and it was opened by the porteress, who 
usually sits on the floor of the locutory sewing. She informed 
me that the order was not sufficient for my admission, but that 
it must be taken to a gentleman who is authorized to admit. I 
begged, however, to see the directress, and she conducted me to 
the locutory. 

The room is divided lengthwise by a fence, and the door by 
which pupils entered to see their visitors was the other side of 
it. It was much too low to separate lovers, and too high by 
far for the convenience of mammas that call to see their daugh- 
ters. The directora entered, however, by the door from the hall. 
I begged her to excuse informalities, and admit me without 
delaying me, and she cheerfully did so. 

I have often wished to get a fair insight into the colegios for 
boys, and have never got farther than the public halls. I de- 
spair ever seeing any thing of the internal life and domestic ar- 
rangements of these institutions. Here I was taken by sur- 
prise : I was shown every thing. I was asked into every room 
— parlors, halls, dormitory, teachers' apartments, chapel, bath- 
room, refectory, garden, and kitchen. 

An interesting sight it was. Not a room but had some curi- 
ous peculiarity, but all arranged with the best intentions. The 
whole was neat, but nothing elegant. Drawing and needle- 
work were taught to excess, but vocal music not at all. Their 
rigid discipline allows no girl to go into the streets, and allows 
access to parents with some difficulty. The pupils were at 
their drawing lessons. They appeared cheerful and pretty. I 
volunteered some suggestions, among which were to get the 
garden cultivated, to fix the chimney in the kitchen so that it 
could be used, to pray less, and sing some. All of this, and my 
sincere commendations of the school, were very kindly received 



SCHOOLS OF BOGOTi. 263 

by the lady whose politeness and cordiality made this one of 
my most delightful calls in the country. 

The Colegio del Rosario is just two hundred years old, hav- 
ing been founded in 1653 by Archbishop Torres. It is in the 
third block north of the Cathedral. I entered it from the house 
of the vice-director, on the north side of the block. Here I saw 
a very old library, with few or no new books, some very old 
portraits, and one or two halls. Students were walking to and 
fro in the corridors, repeating aloud the lessons they were to 
recite. They were an intelligent body of students, but very 
young. I heard a class reciting English to a teacher who could 
barely speak it a little. It was " as good as a play" to hear 
them make mistakes, and especially to hear him correct them. 
Ours is a terribly hard language for them to articulate. 

I visited repeatedly the Colegio Militar. It is in the second 
block south of the Plaza, with the entrance on the east side. 
The school appears in a highly creditable condition as to math- 
ematics, and some examinations that I witnessed there are wor- 
thy of all praise. The library is modern, and good for its ex- 
tent, which is not great. 

I became acquainted with a French professor there, named 
Bergeron, who is something of an enthusiast. He desired to 
call on me with some mesmeric subjects, by whom he would con- 
vince me of the truth of clairvoyance. He came, and failed. 
He is a believer in hidden treasures, of course, and satisfied him- 
self, by aid of clairvoyance or otherwise, that an immense quan- 
tity lay open to view in the Hoyo del Aire. This is a terrific 
' chasm, with perpendicular walls, like the shaft of a mine. It 
lies 14 miles north-northeast of Velez, and five miles southeast 
of Paz. It is on a side hill, so that while the upper side is 387 
feet deep, the lower side is but 247. As the hole is nearly cir- 
cular, its oblique mouth must be elliptical, so that while its least 
diameter is 285 feet, the longer is 367, and the circumference is 
884 feet. These dimensions I take from the estimates of Col- 
onel Codazzi. As the breadth of this well is just about equal to 
its depth, there is no want of light or vegetation. In fact, the 
sides are thickly matted with plants, and at the bottom grow re- 
spectable trees. 

Here lay Professor Bergeron's treasures, if there be any truth 



264 NEW GRANADA. 

in mesmerism. They had been thrown in by the Indians, in 
their desperation, to keep them from the covetous grasp of the 
Conquerors, and he must have them. So, before leaving Bogo- 
ta, he prepared ropes, windlass, and a sort of balloon car, capa- 
ble of holding two. He did not exactly like the idea of going 
down there alone. He selected for his companion a worthy 
priest, Padre Cuervo, who cared less about gold than natural 
curiosities and Indian relics — a very rare taste in a Granadino. 
He consented to share the danger, the professor taking entirely 
to himself the expense and the profits. 

But when they came there the Frenchman stood aghast. He 
was a mathematician, knew the depth in metres, and had pro- 
vided the requisite quantity of rope. But he had not provided 
the requisite quantity of courage, for it was an enormous hole 
to look at. Even from the lower side, 247 feet is a great way 
to swing down in a basket. So the Padre Cuervo might go 
down first ; and he did ; and he wrote an encouraging letter and 
sent up to his patron, but he could not venture down. In fact, 
he doubted whether there were any treasure down in such a hole, 
after all. 

The good priest was in his glory down there — alone in his 
glory. He found a stream running out, and followed it for a 
long way under-ground — a dismal region, peopled with that mys- 
terious bird, the guacharo. This is often supposed to be a spe- 
cies of Caprimulgus ; but Padre Cuervo says that he satisfied 
himself that it lives on nuts, which it brings by night from quite 
a distance. It would, indeed, be difficult to procure, within 
the few fastnesses in which they are known to live, a sufficiency 
of insects for their immense population. I now recollect but 
two other places where the guacharo is known to live : in the 
famous cave in Venezuela mentioned by Humboldt, and at the 
Bridge of Pandi, where I saw them and their nests, but in a re- 
treat far more difficult of access than this. The name of this 
remarkable bird is Steatornis Caripensis. 

Bergeron was a little disappointed with the results of this ex- 
pedition, but the good-natured priest, though not a little elated 
with his success, had the consideration not to publish his ac- 
count of the expedition till the professor had returned to France. 

Professor Bergeron accompanied me to the Observatory, which 



OBSERVATORY. 265 

is in the rear of the Colegio Militar. It is the oldest in the New 
World. It is at the lowest latitude and the highest altitude of 
any in the world, and yet even astronomers know little of it. 
A good account of it is found in the Semanario Granadino, page 
44, of the Paris edition of 1849. I extract some particulars 
from it. It was commenced by Mutis 24th May, 1802, and 
finished 20th August, 1803. It is an octagonal tower, 24.6 
feet of internal diameter, and 51 feet high. It has two stories, 
the upper of which is 24 feet high, and has in the ceiling an open- 
ing to let a ray of the sun at noon fall on a meridional line on 
the floor below. A smaller tower, clinging to the southwest side 
of it, and rising 16 feet above it, contains the staircase and a 
small observer's room. It was furnished with good instruments 
at that date, such as the Graham clock used by Condamine, 
seven Dollond telescopes (no grand one), and an 18-inch quad- 
rant of Bird. The clock and the quadrant, and some other in- 
struments, are still in the museum, but many of the instruments 
have been destroyed in one of the civil wars by soldiers, who 
took the Observatory to be a fortress, from some images of can- 
non that the fancy of the architect chose to put upon the upper 
story. 

A pluviometer in the garden adjoining was all the apparatus 
near ; the building was absolutely empty. Why will not sci- 
ence again take possession of this favored post, and remodel it 
according to the present state of observation ? No habitable 
spot has a more brilliant sky or a rarer atmosphere. The finan- 
cial condition of the nation forbids them even to think of im- 
proving it, but there is nothing that they would not willingly do 
to aid others in enriching science by means of it. 

It would be injustice to leave this memorable spot without re- 
counting briefly the history of the first and only astronomer who 
ever resided in it. 

Francisco Jose de Caldas (Tenorio) was born in Popayan in 
1771, finished a course of law studies in Bogota in 1793, en- 
tered on mercantile pursuits, and failed. He then gave way 
to his natural bent, made him instruments as he could, such as 
telescope, quadrant, &c. An attempt to mend a broken ther- 
mometer, and construct a new scale by boiling water, at Popa- 
yan, gave him, in 1799 or 1800, the idea of ascertaining altitudes 



266 NEW GRANADA. 

by the variation of the boiling-point, an invention which has not 
been duly credited to him in books. In 1802 he became a 
member of the Botanical Expedition under Mutis. In 1806, 
Caldas became the first astronomer in the Observatory of Bo- 
gota. The previous years had been spent in perfecting the ge- 
ography and botany of his country. On the 3d January, 1808, 
he commenced a scientific weekly journal, El Semanario Grana- 
dino, which continued for two years. It was republished in Par- 
is in 1849, edited by Colonel Joaquin Acosta, and improved by 
the suppression of some temporary matter. 

And now began the long and terrible War of Independence, 
and Caldas left his observatory and his science, first to edit a 
revolutionary paper, then to serve as the chief of a company of 
engineers. In 1813, '14, and '15, we find him in Antioquia, 
planning fortifications, casting cannon, making powder, teach- 
ing engineering, and serving the revolution by every faculty. 
In 1815 he returned again to his old work of inciting rebellion 
through the press at Bogota; but when the Spanish General 
Latorre entered Bogota, 6th May, 1816, Caldas fled to Popayan, 
where, after the battle of Tambo, on 29th June, 1816, he was 
seized, and condemned to die. Now he turned to supplicate the 
butcher Morillo, not for himself, but for science. He asked only 
that he might live in the closest prison, on the hardest fare, with 
a chain on his ankle, till he had arranged his papers for publica- 
tion. In vain. The Vandal wished to destroy them more than 
him. In the Pacificador, in Colonel Pineda's collection, we read: 
*'Oct. 29th, Dr., Francisco Caldas, Engineer General and Brig- 
adier General in the rebel army, was shot in the back, and his 
property confiscated." He was only 45. 

Thus died, nobly and honorably, the wisest and perhaps the 
best man that South America has ever produced — the Grana- 
dan Franklin — for he resembled Franklin in many respects, 
only he was. more highly honored; for he not only risked his 
life for his country in the field, but died for her on the ban- 
quillo. Other scientific men, not so eminent, shared his fate. 
Among them were the botanist Lozano, and the chemist Jose 
Maria Cabal. Indeed, so terrible was the cruelty of this wretch, 
that, in looking over the portraits in a gallery of the Colegio 
del Eosario, it appeared as if one half had been murdered in cold 



COLEGIO MILITAE. 267 

blood, and of the remainder, some had died in battle, some had 
been sought in vain for slaughter, and one who had been caught 
was spared, thus fixing a sort of stigma on his reputation, as if 
he was not worth butchering. 

With sad and angry feelings I turned from the garden, over- 
grown with weeds, into the paved patio of the Colegio Militar. 
And here I am reminded of a later occurrence, which I think 
illustrates the fanatical hatred of the Golgotas to the army and 
all concerned with it. Our own West Point has to run an an- 
nual gauntlet, though we have no Congressmen that aim at the 
entire abolition of the army. Here those who are entirely op- 
posed to the army, added to those who wish to weaken and em- 
barrass the present administration, are never much short of a 
majority. Well, it seems that one day some one mingled with 
the dulce of the dinner a quantity of tartar emetic so large that 
it could hardly have been sold innocently by any druggist in 
the interior. No life was lost, but a terrible scene was the con- 
sequence. One student only had not partaken of it, and, from 
the customs of the country, no one would be likely to take a 
double quantity of dulce. The whole city was in alarm, for 
there is no respectable family but has some friends in the Co- 
legio. The President had a son there. All were at once re- 
moved to the houses of parents and friends, and the scanty 
medical knowledge of the city was all put in requisition. The 
author of the deed, who, we hope, knew not the danger of it, 
never was discovered. 

In the by-laws of the Colegio Militar I find a peculiar and 
significant regulation about sickness: "Cases of serious sick- 
ness shall be removed to the officers' ward of the Military Hos- 
pital, and treated at the public expense ; but if the disease 
proves to be ' el galico,' the patient shall be removed to the 
wards of common soldiers, and after his return to the Colegio 
he shall not leave the premises unaccompanied by an officer of 
the school for one year." 

There is, or rather was, another national colegio here, that of 
San Bartolome. The embarrassments of the treasury have led 
to its relinquishment. It was not needed, as the Colegio del 
Rosario is a provincial establishment. Another establishment 
is the Semanario Conciliar, a school for the training of priests. 



268 NEW GEANADA. 

I am under the impression that the locality, if not the appara- 
tus of this, has been rather unfairly seized upon by government, 
in the belief that it was useless to community. It seems to 
me that there is no present lack of priests, unless it be among 
the Indians, where, indeed, a large number of good missionaries 
could find enough to do. 

Some attempts are made to encourage the sciences, and a 
good laboratory has been established here at the expense of the 
nation. I attempted to visit it, but could find no time at once 
convenient to myself and those who had charge of it. M. Lewy 
came out from Paris to teach here, but he became discouraged 
and returned. Public taste does not run to material facts. 

Greek and Hebrew are, I believe, unknown here. I know of 
no works in Spanish to facilitate the study of either ; nor have 
I met a single book in or on either of these languages in the 
country, unless it be in the rare library of Dr. Merizalde. In 
the same way, agriculture, mining, geology, practical mechanics, 
are yet to have their beginnings as studies. 

I visited two common schools, one of each sex. That for 
girls is the poorest girls' school I have seen, while that for boys 
was not much better, poorer than any other girls' school, but 
about equal to the average of boys' schools. The pedagogic 
profession is not respectable in New Granada. It would be well 
to require from candidates for certain offices that they shall have 
taught an entire year in the same common school. Should this 
be required before gaining a doctor's degree, for instance, quite 
a different class of talent would be called into these schools. 

In the southeast corner of the city, or just out of it, is one es- 
tablishment, however, that does credit to Granadan perseverance 
and talent. It is the pottery of Don Nicolas Leiva. To un- 
derstand the difficulties he has contended with, you must know 
something of native character, and especially its aversion to 
steady labor. In entire provinces you can not find one man 
who has ever wrought faithfully all the working days of an en- 
tire month ; and yet this pottery would do credit to the United 
States. Among the uncommon articles made here are porcelain 
mortars and pestles, and those Venetian shades that exhibit soft 
and delicate figures by transmitted light. In one of these Sefior 
Leiva had achieved a very good likeness of himself. I am un- 



MANUFACTORIES AT BOGOTA. 269 

der particular obligations to the attentive and persevering pro- 
prietor. 

The glass enterprise had a much more natural termination. 
Of all bipeds, perhaps the most unmanageable is the glass-blow- 
er. To succeed here, a glass manufactory would need special 
laws, giving the director all power short of life or death for the 
space often years after the enlistment of the operative. But so 
limited is the demand for glass, that it would be better not at- 
tempt to make it here again for a few hundred years to come. 

The cotton factory and the paper-mill, the quinine works and 
the foundry, have all failed. I attribute most of the failures to 
the same cause — the want of suitable operatives. Even now 
vast quantities of rags — a perfect mine of them — are to be seen 
on the borders of the San Francisco. The quinine works man- 
ufactured only the crude alkaloid, which the European manu- 
facturers are said to have finally decided not to buy, lest it 
should ruin some parts of their own business ; so the San Fran- 
cisco, as it hurries down from the Boqueron, can find nothing to 
do but turn two common grist-mills, which, though they never 
grind maize, would not, in the North, be thought suitable for 
wheat. 

The key to all this is a want of education in the masses. 
They are tolerant of hunger : of comforts they know nothing, 
and desire none. Their morals can sink no lower, and their 
religion can raise them no higher. Their beau ideal is to escape 
hunger, to keep dry from the rain, and to be free from labor and 
care. They pay no taxes, beg when they can, and earn noth- 
ing except in case of extreme emergency, but in such case they 
will submit to any thing. Once they had the Hospicio fitted 
up as a work-house, but such a thing can only be kept up so 
long as some man shall make it his hobby : it i's all run down, 
and is become a beggars' nest. Even prostitution would not be 
likely to be a gainful course, wars have carried off so many of 
the one sex, and the low masses of the other are so abject. 
Poor Bogota ! 

With some remarks on the weather, I now take my leave of 
the capital, to return but once, on a special occasion. Mosquera 
supposes that the city is 8655.5 feet above the level of the sea. 
Quite possibly it is rather higher. I would put the lowest 



270 NEW GRANADA. 

point on the plain, at the marshes, at 8650 feet. The latitude 
was estimated by Caldas at 4° 36' 12", and the longitude at 
60° 32 / 14" west of the Isle of Leon, equal, it is supposed, to 
74° 14' 15" west of Greenwich. Boussingault estimates the 
mean temperature at 58° ; Caldas supposed it higher, and so 
have most others ; but I think with Mosquera that 59° is near- 
ly right. January and June seem to be the coldest months. 
The wettest months are called spring and fall months in the 
United States. The barometer and thermometer have both 
quite a narrow range. One terrible morning at sunrise the 
thermometer is said to have been down to 44.6°. This was 
the 9th of May, 1834, and the witness is Colonel Acosta. 
Judge the domestic comforts on that morning of families that 
have never warmed themselves by a fire ; and I really be- 
lieve no man ever learned to do so in New Granada except in 
the house of some foreigner. I never knew of artificial warmth 
in any other house than that of Madama Carrol. On another 
occasion I heard of it down to 46.4° ; but such events are as 
rare as earthquakes. So, too, the thermometer has been up to 
68° in the shade, 26th of February, 1808, the hottest day on 
record. The natural range ought to be put at from 55°, the 
very lowest, up to 66°. Persons used to this like it ; but, if 
you are too cold, just step out into the sun, and you are sure 
to suffer with the heat. 

As to moisture, Bogota has essentially a dry climate. They 
use pepper-boxes for salt, and, in ordinary weather, without dif- 
ficulty ; while at Honda salt needs to be spread with a knife, 
as butter is at the North ; but for all this, there are sufficiently 
numerous rainy days here in the course of a year. It is diffi- 
cult to know the precise number, as some would count it a 
shower when the rain did not wet the entire surface of a flat 
stone, while others would not unless it really rained so as to 
detain a person in-doors. I count very small showers as such 
in the first six months, when I estimate the rainy days of each 
month as follows : January, 8 ; February, 9 ; March, 20 ; April, 
18 ; May, 20 ; June, 10 ; July, 3 ; August, 4 ; September, 5 ; 
October, 6 ; November, 8 ; December, 10. This makes 121 
days in the year in each of which it rains some, or almost ex- 
actly one day in three ; and yet, I think, in the last half of the 



METEOEOLOGY OF BOGOTA. 271 

year, all the lesser rains were omitted. Still, the rainy days 
must be less than half the whole. Now how many of these are 
respectable showers ? About one in five of the first six months, 
and nearly half the others. In 1808 there were ten days in the 
first six months in each of which there fell from two thirds of 
an inch to an inch and three fourths. I can find no good data 
for an estimate of the quantity of rain that falls annually, but, 
from a careful use of those I have, I make the quantity very 
near fifty English inches, probably a little less. 

As to the time of day that rain falls, it is rarely in the morn- 
ing. All through the rainy season you make your calculations 
with as much security as in the finest climates in the world, only 
you take it for granted that it will rain in the afternoon. Thun- 
der is moderate in quantity, and of rather inferior quality, being 
quite tame compared with our best specimens in the Northern 
States, and perfectly contemptible beside the ordinary run in the 
Southern States. To match that, you must go to Choco. With 
thunder often comes hail, and rarely in immense quantities. I 
think half the hail I ever saw fell in one day on the plain of 
Bogota. It is no meteorological mystery that heavy falls of 
hail are always succeeded by ice-cream parties, and that these 
never occur at any other time. 

Frost, I imagine, visits the top of Guadalupe frequently, but 
on the plain it is rare. It requires a succession of cloudy days 
and clear nights. I have noticed things bitten by it once only. 
It has far greater power here in a still night from the rarity of 
the air. The sky assumes a deep blue unknown to lower re- 
gions, and all the dense clouds lie lower down. I have been 
able to read by moonlight even when I could not see in what 
part of the sky the moon was. From the same reason, the wind 
has less power. As it weighs only about two thirds as much 
per cubic foot, the momentum is proportionably less in a gale of 
the same velocity. It is curious to see the air escape from a 
bottle corked at a lower altitude. In short, the difference strikes 
you in various ways, as the temperature of boiling water (195°), 
and its action on food, on cooking, and, above all, on the lungs 
of persons who have been born here, and can never live content- 
edly below. 



272 NEW GRANADA. 



CHAPTER XX. 

3 

THE FALLS OF TEQUENDAMA. 

Leaving Bogota. — Mule-hunting. — Soacha. — Agriculture at Tequendama. — 
Course of the River. — Description of the Falls. — Comparison of Cataracts. — 
Photographic View. — Mist Theory. — Tree-ferns. — Haciendas of Cincha and 
Tequendama. — Saw-mill and Quinine Factory. — Sabbath Reading. 

Two months had ray trunks rested quietly in Bogota, while 
their owner became acclimated, and learned something of the 
ways of the Andine world. I now determined to visit the two 
most stupendous works of nature in this region, the Falls (Salto) 
of Tequendama and the Bridge of Pandi. Most visitors at the 
falls spend only an hour there. They ride there from Bogota, 
and return the same day; or leave Bogota in the afternoon, spend 
an uncomfortable night in the village of Soacha, or are guests 
at the hacienda of Canoas, take a picnic breakfast at the falls, 
and then return. This last is generally a good plan, but I wish- 
ed to spend more time there, and therefore availed myself of the 
permission of Sefior Manuel Umaiia to make the hacienda of 
Tequendama my home for a few days. 

Now came the inevitable trouble of the Andine traveler — to 
find cattle. I was not aware that a good carriage-road ran to 
the very head of the falls, and that a return coal-cart might be 
found in which my trunks could be deposited without that care- 
ful packing and equalizing necessary- in mule-travel. After I 
had lost one day in trying to find mules, the kind Seiiora Toma- 
sa engaged two carga mules, a saddle-horse, and a peon from 
Soacha. They came, of course, later than promised, and, after 
taking leave of my disinterestedly kind friends, I was soon alone 
on the vast Sabana, leaving my cargas and peon to follow. 

Two months' daily rain had made less difference than I had 
expected. The color had improved, but was not as beautiful as 
our spring spreads over fields long covered with snow. The 
road was a carriage-road, but not so remarkably good as that 
toward Honda. As I journeyed south, the hills were never far 



SOACHA. 273 

distant on my left. A mile or two south of the city, a young 
gentleman, whom I had never seen before, overtook me on the 
road, and continued some way past his destination to a substan- 
tial bridge across the Fucha, when he took a polite leave and 
returned. 

Three hours' easy riding brought me to Soacha, famous for 
the bones of carnivorous elephants once exhumed here. It is a 
small, scattered village, in a district of 2918 inhabitants. My 
mules were owned here, and I stopped a moment and paid for 
them. Leaving Soacha, I found myself on an arm of the plain, 
having on my right two ridges of hilL Between them, rising 
mist marked the fulls. Disregarding this, I had still to pursue 
my way to the south, till, after a mile or two, I entered the 
great gate of the plantation, and took a course more consonant 
with my wishes. 

Several small plows, without mould-boards, such as you find 
in the Bible Dictionary, were scratching up the rich black soil, 
and some men were laying a stone wall, substantial enough for 
the foundation of a house. Before me was the mansion, now 
deserted of the family ; and hid in a hollow by its side were a 
saw-mill, the houses of some dependent families, and a quinine 
factory. 

The director, M. Louis Godin, an intelligent French chemist, 
was domiciled, I was told, with a countrywoman of mine. I 
found her of pure African blood, and a very favorable specimen 
of her race. She bore in youth the name of Joanna Jackson, 
and thirteen years ago had a mother living in Haverstraw, to 
whom she said she would gladly send a hundred or two of dol- 
lars if she knew she was living. She said that when she left 
the people were talking of voting for General Jackson and Mr. 
Van Buren, but she conjectures the general must be dead by this 
time. In the interim she has been over Ireland, England, Ger- 
many, and Russia, as a servant, and is now a lady in New Gran- 
ada, and has her white servant. Of the two persons who can 
make quinine on a large scale in New Granada, she is one. 

At length my baggage arrived, and the large parlor of the 
mansion was thrown open to its reception. The patio of the 
house is very large, and the buildings are of but one story on 
three sides, while there is a second story in front, nearly all of 

S 



274 NEW GRANADA. 

which is occupied by the sala or parlor. The room contained 
four sofas, a dozen chairs, and three tables. A comfortable mat 
bed was thrown on the floor, in a corner, and, after taking a 
child's toy-mug full of chocolate, with bread and sweetmeats for 
my dinner, I was left to repose. 

After an early cup of chocolate in the morning I sallied forth. 
To understand my course, you must understand that of the river. 
It had been creeping along the plain at my right, altogether un- 
suspected by me, till I reached the hacienda. There I found it 
entering a narrow gorge of the basin rim of the plain of Bogota, 
where a quarter of a mile of dam would again convert the plain, 
as it has been in former ages, into a lake as large as Lake Cham- 
plain. It had approached the gorge by a course for many miles 
of almost exactly south (south 7° W.). Here the little mill- 
stream, coming from the arm of the plain, mingles its dark wa- 
ters with the yellow tide of the Bogota, and they at that instant 
enter the gorge. Now is heard, for the first time in its course, 
the murmuring of the Bogota. With its character it changes 
its course. For half a mile it flows almost west (S. 78° W.). 
Again it makes another turn, and for perhaps 2£ miles N.W. 
(N. 36° W.). Here, as it enters the forest, it takes another turn 
almost north (17° W.), so that, after doubling the hill, it flows 
almost in the contrary direction to that it had in the plain. 

At the gorge it has already fallen below the surface of the 
plain, perhaps 30 feet, and seems to have been struggling vainly 
with its destiny, for a straight line of a mile cuts its bed eight 
times. The road I took along its bank rises over the first point 
of the hill, giving a fine view of the plain ; then we descend to 
where the river, after a moment's respite, is again roaring and 
plunging at our right. Ah, poor river ! that yesterday flowed 
softly between banks of green, now chafing with rugged cliffs 
and huge boulders, hasten on to thy doom. 

Our road is still a carriage-road. We open gates and pass 
bars till we lose sight of the river as we enter the forest. The 
road now explains itself. In the ledge on the left is a stratum 
of coal nearly two feet thick and of good quality, on this side of 
the river. Still nothing is seen of the cataract till we are even 
past it, when the river is seen pouring down into a gulf that 
yawns among the trees. It is near us ; but to descend is no 



FALLS OF TEQUENDAMA. 275 

small task.. Take your machete, and proceed with caution. 
Avoid five things : do not cut in such a direction that, when your 
machete has cut a vine, it shall terminate its course in your 
thigh ; neither let your left hand intervene between the Iblow 
and the object ; do not fall upon your machete, nor against a 
stick that you have just sharpened by an oblique cut, neither 
cut a bent shrub when it can retort the compliment by knocking 
you over in straightening. The Spanish term for this labor is 
romper monte (to break thicket). 

But the snakes ! the deadly snakes of South America ! I had 
not thus far seen a live one, and but one dead one. With noth- 
ing on my feet but alpargates, I therefore fearlessly ventured 
on. I made my own road, as the guide I reluctantly received 
from Dr. Umana knew not the way, and it was easier to make 
a new path than find the old one. 

At length we are upon the brink of an immense chasm, and we 
will pause to describe it. Writers tell us it has the appearance of 
a work of art. We gather from their descriptions that it is like 
an immense dry dock, the bottom of which is seldom visible from 
the top ; open at the lower end, while down the perpendicular side 
of the upper rushes a river. Now you must be informed that 
the descriptions are made from the opposite bank, where & public 
road leads down to the brink. From that side a front view is im- 
possible ; for the fall is not at the end, but at a corner of the par- 
allelogram, and to them only the side adjacent is accessible. The 
fall is too nearly in a line with their side, which runs N. 19° W., 
while across the fall is JST. 27° E., a difference of direction of 
only 46 degrees, or about half a right angle. Further, because 
their side is straight they imagine ours to be, but a side view 
of ours shows great indentations and projections. Neither are 
the sides parallel, for they approach at the lower end, not only 
optically, but really. The bottom, too, is clearly visible, all ex- 
cept where the fall strikes, where it is covered, of course, with a 
perpetual mist. On their side an inclined plane of debris ex- 
tends, in some places, two thirds the height. On ours there is a 
shelf beneath us, on which you see some tree-ferns growing. 
On their side they think the debris extends up but a little way, 
and our ledge they scarcely see ; hence it appears much more 
regular there than here. The strata here dip four or five degrees 



276 NEW GRANADA. 

to the south, and as the walls are probably at right angles to 
them, theirs must overhang a little : hence more debris on that 
side, as fragments are more liable to fall. 

But notice one peculiarity of the Salto, which gives it its char- 
acter, and adds to and subtracts from its beauty. The fall is 
not a clear fall. The water falls smoothly for 27 feet 8 inches, 
and here, striking on a ledge, the sheet is dashed almost into 
foam, and accomplishes the remainder of its journey more like 
spray hurled downward by irregular violence than a fluid under 
the influence of gravitation. Its irregular and constantly vary- 
ing outline reminds us of a column of smoke or steam, but as 
this motion is violent and angular, while that is slow and grace- 
ful, a comparison between them can only be justified for want 
of a better. Cones of spray here and there seem to shoot out 
suddenly in advance of a falling mass, but are soon overtaken 
and absorbed by the body from which they sprung. These 
cones must be masses of water not yet broken up, that are car- 
ried by their momentum out of the body of spray that falls more 
slowly. Here the resistance of the air breaks them up into 
drops, and they are lost in the mass to which they are now as- 
similated. 

A rainbow hangs over the falls when the position of the sun 
permits. It is varying every instant ; for where now it is bright- 
est, an instant hence there may be no mist, or there may be a 
mass of water too irregular to form a rainbow. The point where 
these observations are best made is a sort of table rock just at 
the brink of the water. Another rock overhangs it, covered 
with Thibaudias, ferns, and orchid plants, making almost a grot- 
to for the observer. 

"We must not forget that this is now just the close of winter, 
and consequently, in the three months of summer which follow, 
the stream, now too small in volume for the mighty proportions 
of the gulf, must grow smaller and smaller. One observer grave- 
ly declares that the whole is dissipated in mist before reaching 
the bottom. 

Of the depth you can judge nothing. It does not look much, 
if any, deeper than Niagara, but it is almost exactly three times 
as deep. It is difficult either to see or hear a stone fall to the 
bottom ; but, throw it as you will, it seems to come in toward the 



CATAKACTS. 277 

ledge as it descends, and is in a fair way to strike exactly be- 
neath your feet. The reason for this optical illusion is well 
known. The course of the stone soon becomes parallel with the 
perpendicular wall, and as both recede from you, the principle of 
foreshortening seems to bring them almost together. 

Various estimates of the depth have been formed, some ex- 
tending even to "half a league." Other estimates in order of 
time are as follows : 

Mutis (barometer) 698 Caldas (dropping) 602 

Ezquiaqui (measure) 724 Gros (measure) 479.425 

Humboldt's MSS. (dropping) . 581 Cuervo " 417.3 

" Published account 600 

The measure of Baron Gros appears to be unquestionably ac- 
curate. Acosta gives the same altitude to the Great Pyramid ; 
and as Niagara is said to be 160 feet, Tequendama lacks less 
than a foot of being three times as deep. The bottom of the 
chasm is a hundred or two feet lower than the foot of the fall. 

The pre-eminence in depth, then, over every other cataract in 
this hemisphere does not tell. It can not be compared to Ni- 
agara. You do not here hear the awful sub-bass of Niagara. 
The noise is even less than that of many smaller cataracts, on 
account of the quantity of air carried down with the water. In 
fact, I think most of the roar is from the first leap of only 28 
feet. If Niagara has a rival in the world, it must be the Falls 
of the Missouri, of which I have seen no good account. It 
seems a little curious that Europe should monopolize all the 
high falls. Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Pyrenees 
alone seem to boast of higher falls than Tequendama ; but of 
their six perhaps two only exceed this in sublimity — Lulea in 
Sweden, 600 feet, and Ruckon Foss, Norway, 800 feet. But 
where, in this competition of cataracts, is Asia, with the highest 
mountains of the world ? Has she no cataracts ? Obviously 
plains, not mountains, must furnish the great cataracts. Te- 
quendama is the daughter of the Plain of Bogota ; and if Asia 
has none equal to it, it must be because her elevated steppes are 
almost rainless deserts. 

The chasm of Tequendama was not made by the present falls. 
Most rivers emerge from the mist of a fall in a pool of unfathom- 
able depth. The first you see of the Bogota, it is running down 



278 NEW GRANADA. 

an inclined plane of debris ; but, in some other geological era, a 
mightier stream, occupying the whole breadth of the chasm, may 
have made excavations, which the present is but filling up with 
stones from above. 

Tequendama wants the power of Niagara. The river might 
be forded a little above. Human effort might arrest its course, 
and bid the cataract cease for a while. Were there ground near 
on which a manufacturing city could be built, the whole could 
be drawn off and let down over a series of breast-wheels, as at 
Paterson. 

The mist of Tequendama has started some philosophical spec- 
ulations in my mind. The people say that it often spreads in 
a dense fog over the surrounding country. This fog begins in 
the morning, at from 9 to 11. Is there more fog here than at 
Bogota ? A day-fog would diminish the mean temperature of 
a place; a night-fog would raise it. The temperature here, 
then, ought to be lower than elsewhere at the same level. I 
found it, by the water of a mine, about 54°, but I would like to 
see it confirmed. Now, although Bogota is 850 feet higher, its 
temperature is given four degrees higher. This indicates a con- 
firmation of my suspicions. In passing four times in sight of 
the Fall Mountains, I have always seen the mist either hover- 
ing among them, or pouring from them to overspread a few 
square miles of adjoining country. Now we must remember 
that this country has no fogs like ours, but bears clouds and 
mountain mists in tropical profusion. This small body of wa- 
ter contrives to manufacture a hundred-fold more mist than Ni- 
agara, at a lower altitude. The mist is begun mechanically ; 
of this there can be no doubt. Is it not propagated meteorolog- 
ically ? Has not one particle of mist the power of generating 
another in a favorable atmosphere ? Here is a grave question. 
The quantity of mist generated directly by the falls seems very 
small ; that proceeding from them varies at different hours of 
the day, and often streams off 5 or 10 miles. Possibly all that 
the weather has to do with this mist is to absorb it at some 
hours and not at others. Meteorology, as a science, is yet in its 
infancy. New Granada offers a wide field for the study of some 
phases of it, which are to be observed nowhere in the whole 
world except among the Andes. 



APPROACH FROM THE WEST. 279 

I could look out from where I stood to "beyond the outlet of 
the chasm, and see the hills there. Down one of those hills I 
saw a zigzag path, apparently well trodden, that seemed to have 
no other object than to reach the water below the falls. I then 
thought that the people above must come down there to wash 
or to cross the river. I noted well its position, for I hoped to 
cross to the right bank at some future time, gain the top of the 
hill, and there descend. 

As I could not do that, I made a long expedition down the 
left side of the chasm, to see if I could descend at the end there. 
I dare not guess how many hours I spent in this toilsome 
march. I went, at my first trial, half way to the farthest point 
I could see at the top of the precipice. Here I found that an 
apparatus had been constructed to lower persons down to the 
shelf below to seek for hidden treasures. I learned next day 
that it would take many days to get round by that way to the 
lower level, as no path existed, and every rod, and nearly every 
yard, must be cut with the machete. 

But I was much mistaken about that zigzag path. To reach 
that hill-top from the opposite side of the stream, you would 
have first to descend to the level of the river and go up that path. 
It is part of the highway from Soacha to Tena that here dips 
down to the level of the Bogota just to rise again in half a mile. 

Fifty-three weeks after I stood on that same point of hill from 
which the road comes down, and there caught my first distant 
view of the lonely fall. I could see but about 50 feet of the 
upper part, and the noise was hardly audible. The great par- 
allelogram, as it is described, opened toward me, but a point of 
hill shut out of sight most of the abyss within. It seemed to 
me that I had reached the outmost verge of the inhabited world, 
and there, just beyond it, surrounded by dense and untrodden 
woods, was this gloomy rather than magnificent cascade. 

I have said that the plain of Bogota was bordered on the west 
by a range of low hills, which, on their western slope, become 
precipitous, and often absolute precipices at a certain height. 
This is the height of the summit of the chasm down which 
the Bogota here leaps. Now draw in your imagination a line 
on the exact level of the top of the falls, as far south as Nieva, 
and as far north as Cipaquira. It might strike one or two In- 



280 NEW GRANADA. 

dian villages, but, if not, every mile would be wilderness almost 
untrodden. Let us begin at. the north, and explore, in the im- 
agination, this cornice of the mountain. All the way on your 
left, to the eastward, you have woody hills, the summits of 
which are at first but a few hundred feet above your line, and 
separate you from the inhabited plain. West of you, on your 
right, is at first precipice, with a few gaps. In the distance, to 
the west, you see Villeta, more than 5000 feet (nearly a mile) 
below you, with its cocoa-trees and cane-fields. You next cross 
the road by which we ascended to Bogota, and find the Aserra- 
dero about 100 feet above you. Then, as you cross the road 
from Mesa to Bogota, you see in the distance La Mesa on a de- 
tached table more than 3000 feet below you, but still near the 
upper limit of cane and oranges. Next we pass the head of 
the falls, and see nothing but tangled wilderness till we cross 
the road descending to Fusagasuga. That town afterward ap- 
pears on a slope of the mountain a little higher than La Mesa. 
Here all east of you is wild mountain and desolate plains. 
Next you pass the fearful chasm over which Nature has thrown 
the Bridge of Pandi, and, by traversing still 100 miles (air line) 
of wilderness in a southwesterly direction, you see at length the 
tawny Magdalena at Neiva, 7500 feet below you. In all this 
vast space you have crossed three roads and two rivers that 
have broken through from the east. You may have passed, be- 
sides, two Indian villages and some Indian trails, and nothing 
more of the works of man. Is not this wilderness indeed ? 

The portal of this wild is the yawning chasm of Tequendama. 
I descended to it, accompanied by the governor of the then 
province of Tequendama, and an attendant bearing ropes, etc. 
We had gained this point early by traveling in the dark before 
day. We were resolved to penetrate up the bank of the river 
to the very foot of the falls. It was impossible, and, I think, 
can hardly be ever possible when the river is too high to be 
forded. First on the one side and then on the other, the stream 
dashes against cliffs that hardly can be scaled. Were we camp- 
ed on this spot for a few days, I would hope, even at this stage 
of water, to reach the spot. It is said also to have been reach- 
ed from the cliff above, on this right bank, by a dry path, but 
difficult in the extreme. To this we could find no guide. 



FALLS OF TEQUENDAMA. 



281 




[From a Photograph by Crowther.] 
FALLS OF TEQUENDAMA. 



PHOTOGRAPHIC VIEW. 283 

We ascended toward Canoas and Soacha, and the ascent 
seemed interminable. We at length reached the very top of 
the ridge that hems in the Sabana, which we did not see. Fol- 
lowing south along the ridge, we came to the road that leads from 
Soacha over a bridge, past the Hacienda of Canoas, to the Salto, 
and also to some coal mines. An enormous descent is before 
you, and good judgment, good directions, or a guide is necessary 
to keep you from losing your way. I believe you should leave 
the coal mines on your right, and keep the road that cost the 
least. . At length you reach a clear spot, where the mule-road 
ends, and where so many parties have breakfasted as to leave to 
the place an abundance of chicken-bones and the name Almorza- 
dero. To this spot coal is brought up stairs by cargueros, and by 
another steep flight you descend to the falls as best you may. 

The main position on this right side is close at the head of 
the fall, as is the only one known on the left bank. There is 
another on the brink, called El Balcon, to which there is a toler- 
able path, and where stands a tree bearing the name of the dis- 
coverer of the spot. At this point was taken the only good 
photographic representation of the falls that I know of. It 
was by Mr. George Crowther, then engaged in commercial opera- 
tions in Bogota, and an amateur photographer. The engraving 
on the opposite page was drawn on wood by Mr. Thwaites. 

No art can do justice to Niagara, and still less to Tequendama. 
Landscapes spread horizontally : the eye can not measure depths 
when it sees them — how much less when they are represented 
on a plane surface ; still, you have here an accurate delineation 
of the falls, if you only view it properly. The axis of the cam- 
era was depressed in taking it, and the eye should fall on it 
with like obliquity. As I hold the plate vertically some inches 
below my eye, I see the summit of the cataract on a level with 
where I stood, but it is very doubtful if any one who has not 
seen the Salto can get tins view of it. 

I advise you, therefore, to imagine the view taken from the 
summit of the debris about one third of the way down. About 
half the fall is visible then, but not a front view of it. Now, if 
you can look at it till the upper leap appears to be. nearly thirty 
feet high, then the abyss will open before you in its true pro- 
portions ; if not, I fear that those human figures, which are in 



284 NEW GRANADA. 

reality far too large, will do little toward a perfect measurement 
of it. That tree-fern, if it had really stood where the artist has 
put it, would have escaped notice in the picture, so distant is 
what seems to be the immediate foreground. Still I am more 
than satisfied with the picture, although it does not accomplish 
impossibilities. No attempt to take a photographic view from 
below is likely to be made. On the right bank, no spot above 
could be better than that selected by the artist. On the other 
side far better points of view might be found, but they can only 
be reached by the machete, as probably not a trace remains after 
a year of such paths as I cut, if not trodden. To reach the ex- 
act front requires but a few minutes' cutting after leaving the 
mine on the left side. The best possible point of view is from 
a jutting crag that here extends some way into the parallelo- 
gram, as the chasm is said to be. 

It is curious to read the exaggerated accounts of the place. 
We are told that such is the deafening roar that the boldest 
hardly dare approach within a hundred yards of the brink. A 
perpendicular fall could hardly make less noise than here, and I 
think we do not even hear the water that strikes the bottom. 
Ezquiaqui says that the falling mass has excavated a hollow 
of 108 feet in depth in the inclined plane of rocks on which it 
strikes. This could not be easily ascertained. I have under- 
stood from others that there is quite a place behind the falling- 
water, where persons have been without difficulty. I do not 
rely on the statement, as it does not seem probable. The wa- 
ter is not a falling sheet, but a mixture of water and ah - , that 
must bring down with it a far greater rush of wind than that of 
the Cave of iEolus at Niagara. 

I myself have been deceived as to the climate at the bottom. 
True, a few miles below are cane-fields, but in these few miles 
the bed of the stream makes a trifling descent — say of consider- 
ably over half a mile — in addition to the perpendicular fall. But 
" we see palm-trees down on the shelf, and these do not grow 
except in Tierra Caliente." These "palms" are tree-ferns, as 
any botanist can tell at a glance, and above are as fine speci- 
mens of tree-ferns as you will see any where. And a most in- 
teresting object they are to a botanist, though by no means so 
beautiful as the palm, seldom exceeding twelve feet in height, 



TREE-FERNS. 285 

with a rough, shaggy trunk, crowned with a large number of 
horizontal fronds very uniform and precise in their shape. 
Drawings of the tree-ferns are not, however, apt to do them jus- 
tice. The crowns of those at Tequendama are far heavier, and 
the fronds far more uniform in size and direction, than in the 
example seen in the plate. The trunks are generally of about 
half the height there seen, with hundreds of fronds as long and 
heavy as the longest there given. They seem to delight in this 
precise altitude, and, indeed, not only were these the first I ever 
saw, but nearly all that I have seen since are near here, at the be- 
ginning of the descent to Fusagasuga. In these two localities I 
have seen quite a number of species of different genera, though 
all alike in habit, and undistinguishable except by close observ- 
ation. It is a little curious that Humboldt seems to have found 
but a single fern in all the bounds of New Granada. They are 
very abundant and varied, both in the valley of the Cauca and 
in the neighborhood of Bogota. 

Tequendama is one of the richest localities of plants that I 
have ever seen. The woods are damp, while most land at this 
altitude is dry. On four of the five days I have spent here, I 
have literally loaded myself with rich specimens. For some I 
have had to reach far over the abyss, in a position in which cau- 
tion is instinctive. But there is much here that I can not get, 
and some plants in fruit to which, I fear, I shall not soon get a 
clew. Here grows the granadillo, of which I saw a dead trunk, 
but could not identify a living tree. If it is not the Bucida 
capitata, I can not tell what it is: it is almost impossible to 
identify woods that you see worked here. I can not tell this 
from rose-wood by any recollections that I have. 

Before leaving the falls, I suggest some facilities that should 
be provided for visiting them. A visit should be made early in 
the day. The nearest place where you can be sure of spending 
the night is Soacha, and you may not be comfortable there ; 
and yet it would cost little to make visits here quite pleasant. 
The locks ought to be taken off the gates, and the wagon-road 
on the left bank thrown open to the public. A cottage with 
two rooms, and a shed for cooking, ought to be erected near the 
falls. A foot-bridge, or even a mule-bridge, should be thrown 
over the river a few rods above the fall. A mule-road should 



286 NEW GRANADA. 

be made into the hollow below the falls, and from there up the 
chasm to the foot of the fall. Thus a cottage, a bridge, and a 
mile of mule-road are all that is needed to make the summit 
and foot of the falls alike accessible to persons from Bogota and 
La Mesa. 

The left bank belongs to the hacienda of Cincha, the prop- 
erty of a brother of Senor Umafia. The house is the nearest 
to the Salto. I had no introduction to the proprietor, but met 
with a dependant who occupies part of his house, whose conduct 
toward me was much more like a gentleman than a peasant. 
The superintendent of Cincha, Sefior Abadia, appeared quite the 
reverse. 

The hacienda of Tequendama is much farther — two miles — 
from the falls, but far more valuable, and better situated on the 
last nook in the plain. The saw-mill was a curiosity. It had a 
large breast-wheel, which, with its gearings, cost as much as the 
entire mill need to have done. It ran very slowly indeed, and 
did rather poor work. The quinine factory had been a grist- 
mill. Some part of the apparatus was quite costly ; the rest 
very coarse, but sufficient. The director, M. Louis Godin, was 
a true Frenchman, kind, cordial, and active. His lady, who 
" could not be married to him for want of her certificate of bap- 
tism," was a good specimen of the Dutch negress. I am not 
ashamed to confess that I enjoyed her society very much, and 
I afterward took considerable pains to see her again. Even 
had I no worthier motive for appreciating her, the specimens of 
northern cookery she exhibited would have been very attractive 
to one who had been deprived of it so long. The quinine made 
here is not esteemed in Bogota, but I am satisfied that it is skill- 
fully made and pure, and, while there may be worse, there can 
be none better. The bark is pulverized entirely by hand, and 
comes from places in the mountains south of here, as nearly as 
I could ascertain. Every man keeps his own quince secrets. 

On Sunday Sefior Umafia came and paid off his laborers for 
the week. They must have been nearly a hundred in number. 
His counting-room contained two articles that surprised me. 
One was a coach, apparently in good order, that could be run 
to Bogota any day, but which, I think, from force of habit, stands 
idle year after year. The other was Pope's Essay on Man, in 



END OF THE PLAIN. 287 

English. Such an unexpected addition to my religious litera- 
ture was not to Tbe neglected, so I took it up to the parlor, and 
read it through with great pleasure and profit. 



CHAPTEK XXI. 

BALLS AND BULLS. 

Cibate. — Priest traveling. — Spinning. — Yoking Cattle. — President traveling. — 
Perpetual Rain. — Riding a la Turque advocated. — Carguero and Babe. — Sleep- 
ing in slippery Places. — Unnecessary Ascent. — Balls. — Bull-feasts. — Open 
Prison. — A Walk. — Rich Gardens, unfortunate Statesman, and frail Poetess. 
— Snails' Eggs. — Masquerades and April-fools. — Gambling. — Dr. Blagborne's 
Family. — Little Alice. 

I like to start early in the week. The Soacha mule-owner 
had promised to have beasts ready. We agreed on the price. 
I was abundantly satisfied with six dimes per beast from Bogo- 
ta to Tequendama, and unfortunately told the owner so. He 
demanded eight dimes from there to Fusagasuga. As I thought 
it reasonable, he added that he must count the peon as a beast, 
making thirty-two dimes instead of twenty-four. To this I as- 
sented, and he feared his generosity would be his ruin; so, 
when I sent for the beasts, instead of sending them, he sent 
word he must have ten dimes. He made me lose a day, but 
he, in turn, lost his bargain. I returned no answer, and when, 
the day after, he sent his peon and mules, another was loading 
my baggage for the trip. 

Traveling south, I have had all the time at my left that chain 
of the Andes at the foot of which lies Bogota. The western 
rim of the Basin of Bogota might be considered as another and 
much lower ridge, which, having diverged from the other, has 
again approached it so as to leave room for a road, and handsome 
farms on each side of it. Nearly all the houses stood back at 
the foot of the hills. This arm of the plain proved longer than 
I expected. I found its end at Cibate, where, however, there is 
no village. 

At Cibate I parted company with a priest — a fine, pleasant 
fellow — who had been settled at Pandi, but was now without 
charge. He invited me here to take some refreshment with 



288 



NEW GRANADA. 



him, to which I was not inclined. He was quite inquisitive 
about the United States, and wished to know if it would be 
long before the immigrant Catholics would be so far able to out- 
vote the Protestants as to establish their religion by law. 




PRIEST ON A JOUENEY. 



I can not vouch that the above portrait was taken from this 
worthy subject, but it will do very well for him. His face is 
bound up to protect it from the dry wind and the intense light, 
one or both of which sometimes destroy the skin, and often 
chap the lips. Before him, on his saddle, is tied his bayeton, 
his defense from rain by day, and his blanket at night. His 
legs are defended by zamarras of dog-skin, and his hat by a 
funda, or case, made of oiled cotton — hule — or oiled silk. I 
judge his to be cotton, for it is of a dull red or brown. 



SPINNING STEEET-YAEN. 289 

Behind comes his peon with an enormous dog-whip — perrero 
— of which the handle is the toughest wood known here, if not 
to man. It is called guayacan, and is quite probably a Guaia- 
cum. I have never been able to find it growing, nor get a stick 
of it entirely free from knots and crooks. It never seems to 
attain a diameter of more than an inch. The horse has evident- 
ly been making some trouble by following his nose off among 
the bushes, where he should not go, and is now taking the 
hack track and also the consequences. On his back is a huge 
bag, called by the Moorish word almofrez, or, more properly, 
vaca — cow. The hide of a cow would be insufficient to make 
the bag, nor would the entire animal be sufficient to fill it. I 
have seen them as large as the largest feather-bed. 

From Cibate I rose till I had a fine view of the plain, of 
which we must now take a long farewell. Nothing but the 
cold makes it a glad one to me. As I left the hacienda, I saw 
the leaves of various plants nipped with frost, a rare occurrence, 
indeed, but one that may happen any month in the year, not 
only under the mist of Tequendama, but all over the plain. I 
confess I am anxious to reach a more genial clime. 

As I passed along, I saw a woman going from one house to 
another, spinning cotton as she went. There are many species 
of Gossypium growing in Tierra Caliente, but those that are 
most resorted to, I can not say cultivated, are large shrubs, with 
quite a scanty fibre. The apparatus for spinning is a stick, with 
a potato or other weight stuck on the lower end. It has this 
superiority over all others, that it needs no machines for picking 
and carding, is the cheapest and most portable in the world, and 
is not liable to get out of repair. Further, to spin street-yam 
must here be rather a meritorious act. 

Near the very top of the hill I saw a man yoking oxen. One 
had been caught with the lazo and tied to a post, and the yoke 
tied to his head. The other was dragged to the spot vi et ar- 
mis, and his horns securely tied to the same straight stick call- 
ed a yoke. They could not move their heads a particle, nor 
look behind them ; but when angry, they could look daggers 
at each other with one eye apiece. They are said to make 
a queer use of the yoke in some parts of the country upon the 
paramos. They have a long yoke with an ox at each end. 

T 



290 NEW GRANADA. 

When they catch cattle for slaughter, they hold the victim down 
by keeping his heels stretched out behind till the centre of the 
yoke is brought over his head. He is raised on his fore feet, 
as horses (not cows) rise, while his heels are held fast till his 
head is secured to the yoke immovably. They are then re- 
leased, and his new acquaintances show him the way home in 
style. There is no love lost between them on the way, but the 
recruit's volition is of very little consequence. 

I now lost sight of the plain, and of my little peon and his 
three little mules, for he took a spare one in case of accident. He 
came in next morning. I descended, rose and descended. The 
road might still be called a carriage-road, but of the worst de- 
scription. Here I met the President's Lancers, who have been 
tagging after him during a fortnight's relaxation at Fusagasuga. 
Soon after came the President, accompanied by an officer. I 
exchanged a few words with him, and farther on met his bag- 
gage, with a lancer or two. 

Soon the road grew worse than any I had yet seen, though 
nature had thrown no difficulties in the way. I thought a com- 
pany of sappers would have been more useful to the President 
than lancers. 

Here I came again to the gray woods. The effect on the 
landscape was that of an immense quantity of Spanish moss, or 
of Usnea barbata at the North, but the cause lay in no one 
thing. Then came the tree-ferns, and some huge stalks of what 
I guess to be achipulla, the root of which is eaten by bears 
and men. I have never seen the growing plant, which is eight 
or ten feet high, but I think it is Amaryllidate or Liliate. 

The road now grew damp, nay, absolutely wet. I had pass- 
ed the Boca del Monte — the mouth of the woods. Then came 
a clear open space, made for or by the resting of travelers. In 
solitary roads these are called contaderos, or counting-places, 
because here they count their company, to see that no essential 
individual, quadruped or biped, is missing. 

At the contadero a large assemblage of little crosses announced . 
that I stood at the summit of no common ascent. Whether it 
was because I erected no cross I know not, but the descent 
seemed to me interminable. Here, it is said, no man passes 
without being rained on. Whether this means that it rains 



DESCENDING TO FUSAGASUGA. 291 

there all the time, or only when it catches a man worth wetting, 
I know not. I received this time the fewest possible drops to 
make good the assertion. I have passed there four times since, 
and have had no farther occasion to complain of neglect. Once, 
indeed, I caught it essentially. I had slept little the night he- 
fore. It rained monotonously. The road, which ordinarily 
seems like riding down the Bunker Hill Monument after some 
earthquake had displaced half the steps, was worse than usual. 
The poor mule, who had the responsible task of bringing me 
down to the bottom, to warmth, and to sunshine, was tasked to 
the utmost. 

I was not labeled "keep dry" but only "with care" and 
while he was doing his whole duty I fell asleep. His back was 
generally at an angle of 45° with the horizon ; mine had sub- 
sided into so many curves as would bring my shoulders nearest 
the saddle. How long I slept, or of what I dreamed, I have no 
idea ; but I waked to find that my encauchado had slipped for- 
ward, so that a stream from my hat was running through the 
head-hole and down my back to the saddle. 

Descending, still descending, like riding down an intermina- 
ble Bunker Hill Monument or a Trinity steeple as high as Jack's 
bean. Here I met women riding a la Turque, or, more directly 
speaking, astride. Near Bogota this is not practiced much. Not 
one woman in five does it, and those who claim to be ladies par 
excellence will not own that they ever do it except in the rough- 
est roads. But it does not appear to me ungraceful, still less 
disgraceful. You see no more of the rider's ankle than she 
chooses ; she is less exposed to awkward accidents, and is de- 
livered from those really dangerous riding-dresses of civilization. 
She does not ride with her chest twisted, and has her animal 
more at command. In fact, the bifurcate construction of man is 
his charter of supremacy over the brute race. 

Infancy must not be trusted to the risks of a horseman's arms 
here. A more secure conveyance is exhibited in the plate on 
the following page. This worthy descendant of the Muiscas, 
that has taken off his hat to you, says, " Sacramento del altar." 
The whole phrase, if he ever said it, would mean, "Praised be the 
holy sacrament of the altar L" Your answer should be, " Para 
siempre" — "Forever." Perhaps you assent to the efficacy of 
the mass in this response. 



292 



NEW GRANADA. 




CARGUERO AND BABE. 



He carries a box, with pieces of hoop nailed on to support a 
cover and curtain of cloth. The whole thing was extemporized 
in half an hour. Within is a babe, an unconscious traveler, 
whose mother is half an hour behind, for she rides a quadruped. 

Descending, still descending. But " it is a long lane that has 
no turning," and, however illimitable moral descent may be, 
physical downhill generally stops at the least when it has reach- 
ed the ocean level. Once I caught a view, through a gap of 
trees, of the mountain beyond, and of the distant plain. I was 
in a deep shade of trees and clouds ; the distant scene lay in 
bright sunshine, but covered with a mantle of that blue scarce- 
ly ever seen except upon mountains. No painter would have 
dared to color it as I saw it. It looked like heaven. 

Descending, still descending. At last the descent became 
more reasonable, such as a carriage-road would delight in, and I 
rejoiced over my task as accomplished. In this frame of mind I 



UNFAIR CONDUCT OF MY HORSE. 293 

caught sight of a respectable mountain in front of me. I was 
about on a level with its summit, and it was too obvious that 
I must go to the foot. Again I began to ride down stairs, 
determined that my patience should not fail again till I had 
reached the very bottom. At the foot of the mountain opposite 
me I reached a stream, and in a spirit of leisure and thankful- 
ness ate some hard-boiled eggs, which the kind and provident 
Joanna had put into the pockets of the saddle, and then slowly 
set forward. Three disagreeable surprises now came upon me 
in succession: that I had yet an immense descent to make; 
that I had to climb the opposite mountain before descending; 
and that night was to overtake me in the mountain. 

This ascent was entirely unnecessary. A shorter road could 
be made around the mountain than over it. The Spaniards had 
an aversion to roads on the sides of mountains. This unneces- 
sary ascent was so great that it would be a prominent event in 
an overland journey from Boston to Oregon. It is not equaled 
by that of Mount Holyoke — if, indeed, by that to Catskill 
Mountain House. 

I reached the top just after sunset, and again the short trop- 
ical twilight revealed the plain in indescribable loveliness. A 
vexatious but whimsical affair diminished by an hour or more 
the length of my night ride. I had been very tender of my lit- 
tle horse — a weakness to which I confess I am subject, because 
" the merciful man is merciful to his beast." I had more than 
once attempted to lead mine, but he elongated his mortal frame 
as if consenting that his nose might reach Fusagasuga that 
night, provided I would allow his body till next day to overtake 
it. And he held back, giving me the labor of partly transport- 
ing him, till my strength and my patience were both exhausted. 

Just at dark the idea occurred of driving him. I fixed the 
bridle securely to the saddle, cut a switch, and placed myself 
in the rear. The plan worked admirably. "We got along bet- 
ter than at any time since we had left the plain. It soon oc- 
curred to me to see if I could catch him again, and I found my 
pony liked the new arrangement so well that he meant it should 
be a permanent one. Nay, he even proposed quitting the high- 
way entirely for the fields and woods. This I prevented by 
some active steps. When I quickened my pace, the way pony 



294 NEW GRANADA. 

marveled over the huge rocks was edifying. I had wet one 
foot, and, I fear, lost some of my patience, when, by a sudden 
motion, I seized a rein and brought him to. 

If the reader supposes I rode at the same delicate pace the 
rest of the way, he knows little of human nature. The merci- 
ful man does not treat all beasts alike, and, had not the rider 
been under obligations to be merciful to his own neck, this par- 
ticular beast would have suffered some. 

At Fusagasuga I found the Church in full blast with explosive 
rockets, whirligigs, and other fireworks letting off outside, for it 
was the eve of some saint. I rode past all this, and in the bos- 
om of an English family, entire strangers to me, I found satis- 
faction enough in one hour to repay me for the day's ride. 

By daylight, the plain, instead of paradisiac alluvium, proved 
to be diluvium, or drift of rather a diabolic kind, for it was 
thickly strewn, in some places almost paved, with huge stones. 
Nor was it horizontal, but descended rapidly toward the River 
Fusagasuga, which lay at the foot of a ridge of the mountain, 
and ran west. The plain lay between this ridge and the one 
next interior or southeast of it, and might itself be considered 
as one of the many spurs sent down by the latter ridge, all 
terminating at the base of the former. 

Fusagasuga is an ugly-looking town, lying at the upper end 
of the plain, adjoining the mountain, as all Spanish towns gen- 
erally are. With one exception, there are no houses but mud 
cottages. I can not solve the politico-economical problem of 
the existence of the town, as there are not visitors enough to aid 
it essentially, and there is not industry enough to support it. 
These puzzles are driving me to the conclusion that the Gra- 
nadino earns little and spends little, and, rather than work, will 
endure the ills of poverty. Nearly every house in Fusagasuga 
is a tienda, a regular tavern minus lodging-rooms. The rooms 
are two, besides, perhaps, a kitchen in the rear. One is the 
store, in which the customers are admitted only just within the 
door; the other a parlor, scantily furnished. The floors are 
mostly of earth. 

I spent most of the holidays at Fusagasuga, but saw little to 
interest me in the village. I absented myself from the pleasant 
family long enough to see a part of three balls, held in the par- 



BALLS AT FUSAGASUGA. 295 

lors of friends. They were solemn affairs, both the dancing and 
the sitting still. The ladies sat by themselves, and, with the 
children, rilled nearly all the seats. The music was from two 
clarinets and a tamborine, for the "Brighton of Bogota" can 
not boast a fiddler. Very little beauty was present, and a de- 
cided amount of ugliness. The morals of the place are said to 
be in so happy a state that there is not a female in the place 
whose character is such as to exclude her from these reunions, 
to which neither invitations nor partners are requisite. 

The figures are not always well understood, and very few 
went through them manifesting any other motive than a sense 
of duty. In solemnity and gravity, however, they do not ex- 
ceed the upper classes in New- York, who deem enthusiastic 
dancing vulgar. 

One of the balls had a supper of hot roast meat and turkey, 
with quantities of pies seasoned with garlic, and dishes flavor- 
ed with lime-juice and capsicum. The ladies ate first. One 
gentleman, in helping the ladies, helped himself also. He had 
in his hand a double joint of turkey. When a piece was nearly 
cut off, he would offer it to a lady, who would take it in her fin- 
gers. When his own piece was nearly off, for want of another 
hand, he took it in his teeth, and then went on with grave im- 
partiality to help the next. A lady wanted drink. A gentle- 
man held a cup to her lips, and, as she drank, made the noise 
nurses make when inviting babes to drink. In all this there 
was a vein of humor, in strong contrast with the general solem- 
nity of the performances. 

I learn that the gentleman distributing the morsels of turkey 
is an illegitimate son of President Santander. I had seen, in 
the Cemetery of Bogota, a monument to " the legitimate son of 
Santander," but did not think at the time that the spiteful ep- 
itaph meant to insinuate that he had illegitimate children also ; 
but unexpectedly I saw here the living monument to a fact that 
does not tend much to diminish the respect with which Gra- 
nadinos look on the " Man of the Laws," claimed by many to be 
the greatest man ever born on Granadan soil. The young man 
bears his father's name. I last met him here in the Valley of 
the Cauca, with five others, having in their charge an immense- 
ly valuable assortment of Church trappings of every description, 



296 NEW GRANADA. 

which they were exposing for sale in every place between Bogo- 
ta and Quito. 

The Christmas ball was at its height when the church bells 
rattled out the time for cock-mass. All parties went to church 
re-enforced by the ascetic part of community, so as to make a 
respectable congregation. The same musicians went into the 
choir with their clarinets and tamborines, and gave us the same 
or similar tunes. The priest had in his lap a doll or image of 
a boy, which a large number crowded round to kiss. Then came 
a procession as far as the church door and back to the altar. A 
long mass followed, and all parties, sleepy enough, went home 
and to bed. 

Sabbath brought no intermission either to billiards or balls. 
I regretted not going on Sunday evening, just for a moment 
only, to see the Cura officiating as "Ensign (patron) of the Ball," 
a fact of which he assured me himself afterward. This is also 
the market-day of Fusagasuga. Such an annoyance can never 
be understood by description. But if one could see, as I did, the 
ladylike daughters of my host patiently engaged for an hour, or 
even two, in a repulsive duty that could not be delegated to serv- 
ants nor adjourned to another day, you would feel that the nui- 
sance is beyond Christian endurance. 

The mass and market occurred together, of course. I would 
not uncover at the elevation of the hostia, and generally was out 
of the market at that time, so as not to offend the faithful. Once, 
indeed, while I was with one of the ladies in market, we were 
caught by a procession which came out of the church and went 
round the square. I did not remove my hat. Fortunately, no 
fanatic who would dare interfere saw me. Many are in favor of 
prohibiting all processions out of church. 

Christmas is the season of bull -fights at Fusagasuga, an 
amusement forbidden at Bogota, on account of the sacrifice of 
human life with which it is frequently attended there. They 
were busy inclosing the square in front of the church with a pole 
fence on Sunday. I had determined to witness this sport, not- 
withstanding the cruelty of it. Both the sport and the cruelty 
I found were entirely imaginary, for the accompanying sketch is 
rather an idealization than a fair specimen. This bull in the 
picture happens to be uncommonly fierce, and not to exhibit that 



298 



NEW GEANADA. 




THE BULL-FEAST. 299 

spirit of meekness that I generally have observed in animals oc- 
cupying his position. After one or two irresolute pushes at his 
tormentors, who invariably dodge him, he often becomes so ob- 
stinately quiet that he will even let you throw fire-crackers under 
his feet without deigning to respond, except by a look of sullen 
contempt. The toreador does not now bear the name matador, 
for he no longer kills, though he sometimes is killed, but always 
by accident. He bears no weapon, but often has his ruana in 
his hand, which he manages to throw over the bull's eyes, and 
then there is the fun of seeing him get it off without tearing it, 
perhaps. You will not fail to notice that the tips of the bull's 
horns have been sawed off. 

But our bull in the engraving seems to be thoroughly roused. 
While prostrate and held by lazos, a belt was put around his 
body, and that chap, with a spur on his naked heel, sprung upon 
him as they let him up. That man in a heavy bayeton has 
got a lesson. He will, in future, take care not to encounter the 
foe when neither in a condition to fight or fly. Indeed, I can 
not say but that he does the latter as it is, but he seeks no safe- 
ty in that flight. Now he is after the cachaco. Oh, if he could 
only get one horn into that hated coat, the amusement of the 
crowd of ruana-wearers would be complete ! 

I have seen bull-fights, as we call them in English, till I am 
tired of them. It would be better to call them bull-feasts, as a 
translation of the Spanish expression of fiesta de toros. The 
only thing objectionable about them is the waste of time, and 
the danger to which the toreadores expose themselves. Most 
of the toreadores are graziers, who need to understand how to 
conduct in the presence of a bull. I know of a lad of 16, who 
had a bull fastened to the horn of his saddle, when his girth came 
loose, and the bull pulled him and his saddle off the horse. In 
such a case, if you can foil the bull with your ruana a little, he 
will turn his attention to some other pursuit more agreeable to 
you, if not better for him. At any rate, the bull has the safest 
game of the two, though not the most agreeable. 

I visited the cantonal prison in Fusagasuga with more indig- 
nation than any other I ever saw. We came to the door, and 
saw quite a number of men inside, who invited us to walk in, 
and we did. " Where is the Alcaide ?" asked my friend. 



300 NEW GRANADA. 

" He is out in the street, Serior." 

"And leaves you here without locking you in?" 

" What would be the use of locking us in, where we can 
get out when we please? We could dig through the walls, 
or break the rods of the window ; and the fence between the 
yard in the rear and the woods beyond would not stop a 
hog." 

" Why, then, do you not escape?" 

" It is against the law, Senor." 

" Evidently this is wrong," said I to my friend. " A man 
who can be kept in this mud shell ought to be at large on pa- 
role. It is a cruel mockery to shut a man up by law in a room, 
and leave the doors open." 

Most of these men had been charged with the theft of a 
quantity of cinchona bark. Had they been guilty, they would 
have run away. So this prison is a test as infallible as that 
for witchcraft used to be. Tie the accused in a sack, and throw 
her into a pond : if she drown, it will be a sign she was inno- 
cent. Commit a man to the prison of Fusagasuga, and if he 
does not run away, you may be sure he ought never to have 
been arrested. 

All through these forests east of us are cinchona trees. It is 
very difficult to ascertain any thing of the trade, for all the land 
that bears cinchona is private property, and the gatherers — 
quinquineros — often find it to their advantage to take the bark 
to a man who does not own the land. Even the legitimate 
trade is kept as secret as possible. The consequence is, that I 
have seen the flowers of but two cinchonas, and of both the 
bark is worthless. All my efforts have only once enabled me 
to see a small tree of a good kind. 

At the lower end of the plain is a hacienda called Novero. 
It has an extensive patio, and most of the family rooms are ar- 
ranged around it on the ground floor ; but there is a second 
story of a single room, and the roof extends over a considerable 
space outside of the room, making a delightful walk in the open 
air. Never was there a more beautiful climate than that of 
Fusagasuga. Twice have I celebrated New Year's here by bath- 
ing in a stream of delightful temperature, and thinking of snow 
at home. It is just at the upper limits, or rather above the con- 



WALKS TO THE CHOCHO. 301 

venient culture of cane, plantains, and oranges, and for these I 
would submit to a slight increase of heat. 

This I found at the Chocho, a hacienda of the late Don Diego 
Gomez, three miles southwest of Fusagasuga, on the hanks of 
the Fusagasuga. Four walks that I took down there will re- 
main for a long time as very sunny spots in my memory. They 
were almost enough to make one forget home for a time. I 
went in different company on the different visits, and if the fair 
pedestrians ever read the paragraph which commends their 
prowess in a six-miles' walk, I hope they will forgive this allu- 
sion to " the memory of past joys pleasant and mournful to the 
soul." 

The picture will not soon fade from my mind. The oak- 
crowned mountain, that rises above Fusagasuga on the east, 
sends down a stream that, by its convenience, determined the 
location of the town. Descending still, it enters a tangled hol- 
low, called the Mague, from some fine Fourcroyas that grow 
there. Farther down, clearings are made in this thicket, and 
some cane-patches squeezed in, not for sugar, but for feed. 
Thus it hurries down to the Fusagasuga at right angles to the 
river, and to the long, straight hill beyond it, where stands the 
miserable little town of Tibacui — miserable, at least, for its 
drunken priest, who goes from the correction of the stocks to 
the altar, and from the altar, on Sundays, to Fusagasuga to 
gamble and drink. I saw him once ride past me on the Sab- 
bath drunk, as my companions said, but I had not noticed it. 

Fusagasuga stands chiefly on the right bank of the little brook, 
but the road to Tibacui and Mesa (distant 39 miles scant — but 
17 hours) crosses the stream on a narrow bridge just below, 
and follows down the left bank. For half a mile the road is 
fenced out like country lanes at the North, but innocent of 
wheels. You pass several cottages on the left, among them one 
that belonged to General O'Leary, the British minister. The 
lane ends with a gate as you enter the estate of Novero, and 
pass down the green slope, leaving the buildings some way to 
your left. Long and sweet was the path down this sunny slope 
till we came to some tuna (Opuntia) plants, with ripe red fruit 
as large as a small pear, and beset with fascicles of spines ex- 
actly like those of our prickly-pear at home. The fruit has 



302 NEW GRANADA. 

neither sweet nor acid enough to make it very good, but it can 
be eaten, and therefore must be. A dozen of them, when freed 
from the terrible microscopic spines, are not worth one good 
orange from Fulton Market, and the removal of the spines is no 
trifling task ; but, as the fruit must be eaten, it must be done. 
My epicureanism was rewarded with one persistent little spine 
in my palate, that defied all my efforts at extraction, till I had 
vowed never to pick and shave another tuna for myself or for 
any girl living. 

Another fact was impressed on me. I had adopted the ple- 
beian chaussure, alpargates ; and, as one of the long spines of 
a fallen tuna stem made its way between the braids, and pene- 
trated deep into my sole, I was convinced that, excellent as 
alpargates are for ordinary walking, they are a poor defense 
against thorns. Farther on I saw another plant, that was re- 
markable for sending down a bunch of flowers on a peduncle as 
large as a pack-thread, and six feet long. The flowers are fol- 
lowed by pods covered with a velvet of microscopic barbed 
spines, and containing large, round, flat seeds. It is one of 
several species of Mucuna, called here pica-pica, and, from the 
form of the seeds, ox-eye — ojo de buey. They may all be call- 
ed cowhage. 

The path descends much more slowly than the stream till it 
reaches a point of the hill where it must almost leap off. You 
involuntarily pause here to feast your eyes. You trace the 
straight course of the Fusagasuga, running at the base of that 
long hill opposite to us, without a gap or a spur for 15 or 20 
miles. On the right the valley rises- gently till it reaches the 
woods that cover the steep ascent to the Sabana, while far away 
to the left you see an opening where it empties into the Suma 
Paz just before reaching the Plains of the Magdalena. I think 
it was on the banks of the Fusagasuga that I ate my eggs in 
my descent, and that a carriage-road might strike it high up 
near where it issues from the woods. The distance to Bogota 
would be about the same, 25 miles, but the time might be re- 
duced from eleven hours down to six. 

At the foot of the hill is a bridge across the brook, and an- 
other over the Fusagasuga, and then a little below is the Ha- 
cienda of the Chocho, so called from a species of Erythinia, a 



DON DIEGO GOMEZ. 303 

small tree with beautiful scarlet flowers. Senor Gomez might 
have been an eminent statesman. He had enough learning and 
talent for it, and, it seems, too much interest and patriotism. He 
was charged with a complicity with that attempt to assassinate 
Bolivar that failed on the 26th September, 1828. His trial for 
it was unsatisfactory to both prosecution and defense, and the 
sentence worthy of a dictator. "Forasmuch as nothing ap- 
pears against Diego Gomez, he is condemned to three years' sur- 
veillance at Turbaco." 

"I am splitting my brains," says Don Diego to the officer 
who was carrying him to Turbaco, " to find out the logic of that 
sentence, Forasmuch as nothing appears against me, therefore 
I am condemned," &c. 

"Never you trouble your brains," replied the official; "the 
nation never will be ruined for want of logic ! (This is literally 
true, for Bacon never has supplanted Aristotle here.) 

Three years brought great changes. He left his lady, Seiiora 
Josefa Acevedo de Gomez, an estimable poet, worthy of the com- 
panionship of Mrs. Hemans and Mrs. Sigourney ; he found her 
the mother of a babe conceived in his absence. They separated. 
He became a sot. She retired to a home in the edge of the vast 
Andine forest, a few hours from here, where she pours out the 
bitterness of her soul in touching strains, demanding of Death 
why he takes the happy and the hopeful, and overlooks her. 
(See Acevedo, in the Parnaso Granadino.) Their estimable 
daughter married beneath her family, it was said, and, though 
her husband is a worthy man, she was not permitted to bring 
him to the Chocho. I write these things more freely, as in 
these few days news has reached me that the unhappy husband 
and father has left this world. The son-in-law proves a worthy 
successor of Senor Gomez in the particular in which I esteemed 
him most — the cultivation of fruit. 

I have said that gardens are unknown in New Granada. At 
the Chocho are three, all with high walls, and padlocks on the 
gates. Without these, fruit can not be cultivated. These gar- 
dens contain nothing but perennials, chiefly trees, for monocarp- 
ous plants can not be kept up where all labor is spasmodic. As 
all other mammals are kept out by hedge, gate, and padlock, the 
most formidable foe that invades the premises is the bat. They 



304 NEW GRANADA. 

come in myriads of myriads, and, of course, in the night. Hu- 
man weapons are as powerless against them as against locusts. 
The pomarosa is their first choice. It is a Myrtate fruit, per- 
haps Eugenia Jambos, of the size of a small peach, and with a 
slight flavor of wintergreen. Between bats and children, I nev- 
er expect to see a ripe one. In default of this, they even attack 
the mango — Mangifera Indica. This fruit, of the shape and 
size of a pear, but with the large end attached to the stem, is a 
decided favorite in the tropics, though I can not forget how it 
has been described as a mixture of tow and turpentine. You 
must learn to overlook these two ingredients, which are never 
entirely absent, but not always prominent. 

Another fruit that I saw here for the first time is the madro-r 
no, Theobroma arborescens. It is built on the plan of the ca- 
cao, but, as it is no larger than a plum, it has but two or three 
large seeds, and a scant pleasant pulp that scarce pays the 
trouble of eating. It is from a fine, handsome tree. Of oranges 
there was no end to the variety. Dr. Gomez had some slips of 
red currant that he was anxious to make live. He had several 
date-palms growing, but they were not old enough to be sure 
of their sex. Some fruit-trees I have seen nowhere else, and 
therefore pass them unmentioned and undescribed, for what is 
common must take the precedence of what is rare. 

These gardens are famous for snails, Bulimus oblongus, that 
are as large as a goose-egg, and themselves lay eggs as large as 
those of sparrows. By the kindness of the family I secured 
quite a number of them, in. the faint hope that they may reach 
the seaboard. 

The festivals still continued : the 28th of December is the 
Innocents' day, or the commemoration of the children slaughter- 
ed by Herod. Persons take the liberty of acting in some re- 
spects like children in honor of the day, particularly in what we 
would call April-fooling. When a person is victimized, he is 
told to consider himself an Innocent — " tengase por Inocente." 
The same idea runs through some satirical poetry. One, for 
instance, devotes a stanza to our friend Lopez. In English and 
Spanish it might run thus : 

El que por ser Presidente Let him who thought the land to rule 

Creyo asi gozar del mando, When he became a President, 

Y es juguete de algun bando But finds himself a party's tool, 

Tengase por Inocente. Regard himself an Innocent. 



INNOCENTS' DAY. 305 

I shall not to describe the grotesque masquerades that held 
possession of the streets by day and partially at night. The 
Yankees can beat them when they try ; but the masquerade 
ball of the evening did not deserve the name. A man who had 
sewed some bands of white on the seams of his clothes, or a 
lady who had dressed her hair in calico, was considered to be 
in masquerade. It is noteworthy that this, which I intend shall 
be the last ball I ever attend in my life, was held in the very 
same house where I attended my first, and from which I went 
to cock-mass 369 days before. They are essentially dull and 
tedious, and even the first did not pay me for the trouble by 
gratifying any curiosity, and all since have been visited only 
from a sense of duty to my readers, to see with my own eyes 
what I describe. 

It was Saturday night, and I fell into conversation with the 
priest, who never fails to attend. 

" Do you not need to be preparing for the Sabbath ?" I asked 
him. 

"lam preparing for it," he replied. 

" How ! Do you call this preparing ?" 

" Why, the mass on fiestas is much later than on other days, 
and I should be very hungry were I not to eat just before mid- 
night, as it is forbidden to say mass after eating." 

" And if there be no ball ?" 

" Then I go to the billiard saloon, which is always open." 

"But if you swallow a single mouthful after midnight?" 

" I take care about that, for I have a good watch — a rare ar- 
ticle in this country, you know ; but if I should find I had 
done so, I would not consecrate the hostia I consumed at that 
mass." 

" I understand : you would say, in place of the words of con- 
secration, Panis es, etpanis manebis — bread thou art, and bread 
thou shalt continue to be. But would that mass have any effi- 
cacy for those that heard it ?" 

" None at all. But I would not say those words ; they are 
a mockery. I might say even the precise words of consecra- 
tion with the special intention of not consecrating, and it would 
not be consecrated." 

Quite a group had now gathered round us, for it was in the 

U 



306 NEW GRANADA. 

interval between two sets, and I changed from Spanish into 
Latin, and proceeded : " I wish to ask you one more question. 
Do your canons, like those of Moses, require abstinence from 
women, as well as from food, previous to officiating ?" 

" The canons require that at all times, and therefore contain 
no special injunction on this point. An infringement does not 
invalidate the mass." 

" Then, an hour hence, unchastity would be a less sin than 
the eating of a cracker ?" 

But it was too evident that our Latin was understood by the 
by-standers, from the close analogy of the Spanish, and I could 
press the good priest no farther. 

Street gambling of various kinds, by the light of flaring tal- 
low candles, helped to add to the liveliness of the nights. Most 
of these games appear peculiar. A favorite game was called lo- 
teria. I could look over the heads of all the company that sur- 
rounded the little table, where each of a definite number of play- 
ers had staked his cuartillo, and had a card with a series of pic- 
tures on it. The pictures were in different order on every card. 
The same pictures, on blocks, were in the dealer's bag. He 
puts in his hand and draws out one, and calls out, in a loud, 
drawling tone, "Chulo chupando tripo" — "Gallinazo eating en- 
trail." Each player lays a grain of maize on his copy of that 
interesting picture. The dealer lays down the block and draws 
another, always using several words in proclaiming it. At 
length a lucky fellow cries out " Loteria !" He has four grains 
in a row. The dealer ascertains that the four corresponding 
blocks have been drawn, gives him all the cuartillos except one, 
and makes up a new game. 

I can not think the remark of a traveler (Duane) correct, that 
the Bogotanos come to these places to gamble because they 
are ashamed to do it in Bogota. I fear it can not be denied to 
be a national vice, too common to excite shame. They come 
here to enjoy themselves, and gamble because they enjoy the 
occupation. 

I must leave Fusagasuga, but I should do too much violence 
to myself were I to do so without mention of the family to 
whom I owe more than I can ever repay. Dr. Joseph Blag- 
borne came out from Great Britain in the service of the Santa 



AN ENGLISH FAMILY. 307 

Ana Mining Company, which he left on account of a difference 
with the resident agent, I believe. He practiced medicine a while 
in Bogota, but, when he became a citizen of New Granada, he 
received a beautiful piece of ground two hours from here, and 
is bringing it into cultivation. He is beloved, but not appreci- 
ated here. They know him to be benevolent and kind, consid- 
erate of the feelings of the poorest, but they do not suspect how 
much of thorough, real education there is sheltered in that cot- 
tage ; they understand the gentleman, but not the scholar. 

But he is not alone. Mrs. Blagborne and six interesting 
daughters, as thoroughly English as if they had been born in 
the Fast-anchored Isle or in Boston, make the weary traveler 
forget for a while that seas roll between himself and any land 
of homes. You would little suspect that they had some of 
them never seen a school, or a master, or a modern school-book. 
In the cultivation of their minds, his little garden at home, and 
that beautiful Eden guaranteed to him by the most liberal, if it 
be not the strongest nor richest government on earth, Dr. Blag- 
borne finds that pleasure which gayer scenes and the rounds of 
fashionable folly can never afford. 

Dear little Alice I what a sunbeam you have been across my 
path ! How happy have been the hours we have spent in the 
thickets where heat and cold are alike unknown, where your 
quick eye hunted out for me the delicate fern, the minute pas- 
sion-flower, and the well-hidden bird's-nest. And when a rare 
mistletoe hung provokingly just out of my reach, don't you re- 
member how the forty inches of your little form, added to the 
height of my shoulders, just brought the fragile boughs of the 
parasite within the reach of your fingers and my herbarium ? 
And now I am not ashamed to say that of all the inhabitants 
of this half continent I love you best. 



308 NEW GRANADA. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

THE BEIDGE OP PANDI. 

Hacienda del Retire — Slow Horse. — Probable Origin of the Bridge. — Humble 
Posada. — Bad Priests. — The Bridge. — Cemetery of Pandi. — District Prison. 
■^-A warm Walk and cold Ride. — Dull Horse and fragile Sticks. — Problem 
of Achilles and the Tortoise exemplified. 

On my way from Fusagasuga to Pandi, I made a visit with 
Dr. Blagborne to his Haciendo del Retire It is a few miles 
south of Fusagasuga, and off the road to Pandi. It is a cove 
scooped out of the mountains, a beautiful gentle slope, hut so 
shut in by abrupt and broken ground that ten rods of fence ef- 
fectually protect a thousand acres from invasion. Bananas still 
grow abundantly here, where the tall, hollow stems of Cecropia 
peltata have fallen to make room for them. The yuca must 
stand here near its upper limit, but the potato and arracacha 
are in their perfection. The ground rises steadily to the east, 
covered with huge trees, that must include precious cabinet- 
woods, as well as an unknown quantity of cinchona. To the 
west the scene is different. You now look entirely over the 
hill beyond the Fusagasuga, and, when the weather is clear, the 
awful peak of snowy Tolima stands disclosed. But of the near- 
er world it is only a little that can be seen from here, and of 
human labors Dr. Blagborne can say, as he stands here, "lam 
monarch of all I survey." 

I engaged, as guide and companion to Pandi, a hair-brained 
young fellow, an employe of the gobernacion at Bogota, as he 
tells me. He regretted not having gone in his military coat, to 
show me how the people would take him for a recruiting officer, 
and fly to the woods. He mounted himself on an animal that had 
two faults : he was both lazy and lame, if not even worn out 
— destroncado. My own beast, thanks to a fair friend, a much 
better judge of horse-flesh than I, who kindly secured it for me, 
was as good as need be. We made an early start — that is, we 
were off before ten, and were soon on the edge of the inclined 



Origin of the bridge. 309 

plane of Fusagasuga, where it is cut off by a large stream com- 
ing down from the hills. 

Pandi is west of south of Fusagasuga, distant from 25 to 30 
miles, over spurs of the left-hand mountain, while that on the 
other side of the Fusagasuga is uniform in its general direction, 
and with few projections. Each valley the road passes is sure 
to have a stream running to the right, where they unite with 
each other as they flow westward. 

But now, from the summit of a ridge, we can look over a low 
spot in the left-hand mountain into an immense valley beyond, 
lying between that and a still inner range. Examine that spot, 
and it appears as if a large gap had been broken in the mount- 
ain, as by a blow from this side. What remains has the same 
slope on this side as the rest of the mountain, but on the other 
side the descent is steep and precipitous. The summit ridge 
there must be rather sharp. 

But the basin within, where does it discharge its waters? 
Not to the north of this, I am certain, or I must have seen the 
pass, and crossed the stream between here and Bogota. To the 
east? No, the eastern ridge here is still higher. To the south? 
That does not seem impossible, but if not so, no outlet is visi- 
ble from here. If there be no southern outlet, the whole must 
once have been a mountain lake perhaps thousands of feet deep. 
Over this sharp ridge would be a good outlet for it, and if it be 
of the horizontal sandstone we often meet here, it might wear 
down rapidly. It might be cut down hundreds of feet, and 
even so deep as to drain the lake without increasing in width. 

But can you see any evidence of the existence of such a 
stream ? Not in the least, although a long space of the mount- 
ain side lies clear in view. Such a narrow channel, and so deep 
as this would be, must be exposed to land-slides. Such rocks 
as reach the bottom must share the fate of the original rock 
there, be pulverized and carried down. But suppose a mass of 
rocks should slide down too large to descend the narrow chasm? 
This might well be, and then we should have a Natural Bridge. 
Let us see. 

But I was not destined to see that day. Jose's horse fairly 
gave out, and I mounted him on mine, and pursued my way on 
foot much more comfortably and rapidly. While daylight last- 



310 NEW GKANADA. 

ed I enjoyed myself. Among other bushes, I noticed a Euphor- 
bia of poplar-like leaves, called, on account of its very poison- 
ous nature, by the same name as the manchinael-tree — manza- 
nilla. I think it is E. cotinifolia. 

Each hill was lower than the preceding, and, thus descend- 
ing, I reached Pandi at about 8 at night, and found posada at 
the house of the alcalde. It is a tienda, with a third room ad- 
joining the parlor. A miniature chicken and a very clean 
wooden spoon (no knife or fork) were set on for my dinner, and 
for my bed was placed an ox-hide, afterward exchanged for a bor- 
rowed hammock. I asked for a chair to be put in the piazza, 
as this place is lower than Fusagasuga, and the night was warm. 
They had no chair, so they put out a bench, ten feet long, with 
no back to it. 

Pandi has a church, but, at present, no cura. They sent 
away their last for various reasons ; among others, chasing one 
of his flock with a knife when he was drunk. The people of 
Pandi were once cursed with the present incumbent of Tibacui. 
It is a great defect of the Romish system that it has no way of 
disposing of a bad priest. It can convert him to no other pur- 
pose, as we do a razor that will not shave. It can not kill him, 
as we do a horse with a broken leg. It can only maintain him 
as a gentleman at large, or make a missionary of him. 

But the bridge. Well, morning has come, and, having taken 
a cup of chocolate, we will set off. The distance is a mile or 
more, in the same direction as yesterday, crossing in the way 
another stream, running, like all the others, to our right. The 
bridge itself, and the narrow chasm that it blocks over rather 
than spans, is sometimes passed without seeing it. This nar- 
now canon, as Fremont would call it, is said to be 300 feet 
deep, with perpendicular walls. Its general width appears to 
be from sixteen to twenty feet. I do not regard it as impossi- 
ble that a human leap might clear the gulf. The structure is, 
as I intimated, in horizontal sandstone. The direction of the 
stream was N. by W., or 13 degrees west of north. Doubtless 
the bridge was the work of a land-slide, and so extensive must 
it have been that it has left four or five rods of the chasm cov- 
ered over. Travelers tell you of how many stones the arch is 
composed. I should place no reliance on any such statement, 
had not Humboldt seemed to confirm it. 



NATURAL BRIDGE. 311 

You are told that the lowest bridge is made by three enor- 
mous stones, that were falling simultaneously, and caught in 
the form of an arch there, the middle one being largest and 
highest. 

Baron Gros, who has spent more time here than any other 
intelligent man, regards this lower bridge as a single cubical 
stone, too large to enter the chasm. Let us call it a stone of 
forty feet by forty-six; the northern end, down stream, much the 
lowest. Exact observations can only be made from beneath, 
for it is covered with vegetation so as to resemble part of an 
ordinary dry ravine. I am inclined to think there must be 
more than one stone, for near the middle of it is a hole two feet 
in diameter, through which we threw large stones down into 
the water. 

Ascending to the upper edge of the lower bridge, you creep 
under an enormous flat stone, resting on the banks on both sides, 
and entirely free from the lower bridge. This enormous flat 
stone makes the second bridge, which may have been separated 
from that beneath it by earth at the epoch in which the whole 
mass descended together. This earth has since disappeared, 
leaving the stone, with its ends resting on the opposite sides of 
the chasm, while the rest of the slide descended partly into it. 
So we have a bridge over a bridge. It extends a little farther 
up stream, so as to cover the upper* edge of the lower bridge. 

On this broad stone lies a large quantity of earth, put there, 
I conjecture, to make a roadway, but this being found too low, 
a wooden bridge was built above of poles, covered with earth, as 
usual, and, what is unusual, protected by railings. One of these 
is necessary, for the broad stone and the wooden bridge are at 
the very upper edge of the land-slide, so that from the upper 
side of the bridge you can lean over the railing, and look per- 
pendicularly down to the roaring river beneath. The Suma 
Paz would be a large stream if flowing in an ordinary channel 
through a plain — smaller than the Hudson, Connecticut, or Del- 
aware, but as large as the Housatonic, Mohawk, or Merrimack. 
Humboldt supposes that here, swift as it is — a perfect horizon- 
tal cataract — it is about twenty feet deep. I have examined 
the river below, and think it quite probable. 

I did not go below, thanks to my horse and other detentions, 



312 NEW GRANADA. 

which rendered it impossible. Were the bed of the river but 
passable, a descent would amply repay all trouble ; but, besides 
the fearful suspense^ with 300 feet of water beneath you, you 
would find it impossible to pass from spot to spot, even on the 
same side of the stream. It is a task for a samphire gatherer. 

On the shelves of the rocks, a little above the water (perhaps 
more than half way up), I saw the nests of the guacharo in great 
abundance. These nests appeared to be cones of dried mud, 
but even the little Dollond telescope I carried would give me 
but imperfect data by such a vertical view. On throwing stones 
down, the birds were aroused in immense numbers. I can not 
learn that a specimen has ever been procured from this spot, 
and it may not be the guacharo. It is supposed to be as large 
as a crow. 

The bridge is at an altitude considerably below Pandi, for the 
thermometer at 10 o'clock was near 80°, higher than I have seen 
it since leaving Honda. 

On my return from the bridge, I visited the most desolate 
cemetery I ever saw. It was an ellipse, that had been inclosed 
by a thatch shed, now broken down in some places, so that, as 
well as the chapel, it furnishes to cattle a shelter from the sun. 
There are no bovedas — no monuments : every grave is trampled 
down by cattle, and the area is filled with long grass, and all as 
neglected as the tombs of Idumea. 

On my return to Pandi, after using again the wooden spoon, 
I visited the District Prison. I spoke before of the eight na- 
tional prisons of three kinds, and the thirty-one provincial pris- 
ons, which, however, contained (August 31st, 1851) but forty- 
three prisoners. The system requires also 99 canton prisons 
and 756 district and hamlet prisons, making a total of 894 of 
these benevolent institutions for a population of 2,243,730, or 
a prison for every 2510 souls. That of Pandi occupies the 
two ends of the Alcaldia. Of course, they never shut up a 
man in these card-houses : it would be ridiculous. They lay 
down a hide for him to lie on, and jput one leg in the stocks. 
This would seem no joke to an American who had not yet had 
his trial, especially if, with this slight impediment to his mar- 
keting and cooking, it was still to be done at his expense, or 
not at all. The treatment of different prisons is different. In 



PRISON AT PANDI. 313 

Bogota they feed the poor, but not sufficiently. The rules of 
the different provinces are different in this respect, nor can I, 
by any possibility, come at any general statement of them. I 
think in this province (for the canton of Fusagasuga was then 
in a province of Tequendama, since reunited with Bogota) they 
give them water, and nothing more. 

I started on my return about 11, leaving Jose, my horse, and 
my gun to follow soon after. So they did, that veracious indi- 
vidual informs me ; but I waited for him at various points of 
the road, and when, unfortunately, I came to the other horse, my 
course was slower still. I wore out all the riding-sticks I could 
find. I begged a boy that overtook me on foot to cut me some 
tough ones, but they wore out like asparagus sprouts. I finally 
got tired of whipping, and, I suspect, the poor brute tired of be- 
ing whipped. I at last required no more of him than that he 
should keep stepping, and with a moderate use of sticks as long 
as they lasted, I contrived to keep him up to the minimum of 
continuous motion. 

It was quite warm when I left Pandi at 11 A.M. I started 
in my coolest trim, leaving all superfluous clothing for Jose to 
bring on. Now, as the sun was descending and I rising, the 
cold began to penetrate to my bones, but I had no way to keep 
warm but by my attentions to my horse. As Jose had also my 
money, I was under no temptations to extravagance, even had I 
been willing to delay for food. 

Long after dark, I arrived at a bridge that I had noticed be- 
fore as over quite a stream, and so long, so narrow, so high, and 
so slender as to make one's flesh creep. I have had to ride 
horses blind of one eye over such bridges, but that is dangerous: 
they always take such one-sided views of things. Of course 
these narrow bridges have no railings, for if they had, the bag- 
gage-mules could not go between them, as they would be too 
near together. I had no difficulty in keeping my terrapin on 
the narrow way over the trembling fabric till, after a long, long 
while, I no longer felt the ground sway under his reluctant steps. 

I arrived in Fusagasuga between 9 and 10, having lost about 
half a mile for want of a guide. Jose arrived 10 minutes later. 
He " started about half an hour after me, came on smoothly and 
rapidly," and to this day "it is a mystery to him why he did 
not overtake me." 



314 NEW GRANADA. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

IBAGUE. 

Sugar-mill. — Boqueron. — Ferry over the Suma Paz. — Melgar. — Immersion. — 
Custard by a Chemist. — A Ford. — Inquisitiveness. — Equivocal Generation. — 
Crossing the Magdalena. — Strait and narrow Way. — Espinal. — Live Snake. — 
Late Breakfast. — Conscience at a Ferry. — Ibague. — Schools, Books, and Stud- 
ies. — The Priest and the Cock-pit. — Extreme Unction, Coffin, and Grave. — 
Provincial Paper. — Blockhead Legislators. — Taxation. — Legislative Asses 
nearer Home. 

Beasts are not dear at Fusagasuga when the right persons 
look for them. I paid to Pandi, two days, 60 and 80 cents ; to 
Bogota, for a week's absence, $1 20 ; and to Ibague, five days' 
journey and back empty, $4 each. Ibague lies on the west- 
ern verge of the valley of the Magdalena, about 75 miles, air 
line, west of Fusagasuga. To reach it I must descend to within 
about 700 feet of the sea-level, and pass through the torrid zone. 
What sufferings I must endure from heat! What anacondas 
and boas, jaguars and pumas, I must kill or run away from ! 
What perils from rattlesnakes, robbers, scorpions, centipedes, 
and other creatures of that ilk, I must encounter ! I resolved 
to encounter all these perils on foot — yes, absolutely on foot, 
contrary to the advice of every friend I could consult. All urged 
me to abandon the idea. I was to be seized by fever ; killed 
by heat ; used up by fatigue, and exterminated generally. We 
shall see. 

I took an early start from Fusagasuga on Tuesday,. 11th Jan- 
uary, with two good baggage-mules and a good peon. Said 
good peon failed to come in season, and my start was early only 
comparatively speaking ; that is, I rose at 4, and left a little af- 
ter 10. I had provided myself with bread and chocolate for five 
days, and a good-sized fowl — dear little Alice's purchase. Some 
meat was sent me, but it looked so green and smelled so strong 
that I sent it back, preferring to take my chance. 

My first day's journey was on that inclined plane on the up- 
per eastern end of which Fusagasuga stands. On my right I 



LA PUERTA. 315 

had the River Fusagasuga, and beyond, a chain of mountains al- 
most without spurs. On my left was a stream formed by the 
union of all the streams I passed on my way to Pandi, all of 
which I then supposed flowed separately into the Fusagasuga. 
Beyond this, on the south, was a continual succession of spurs 
of the eastern branch of the Andes. 

This plane is broken across in one place by a deep depression, 
from which you rise to La Puerta, the hacienda of Don Lucas 
Escobar. I had been before at his trapiche or sugar-mill, one 
of the best in the land. I know of but three that go by water. 
That at Cuni may be better than this. Senor Escobar's rollers 
are of iron, horizontal, and three in number. They are turned 
by an overshot wheel, and the juice runs directly down into the 
kettles, where it is boiled by the waste cane — basajo. 

All the cane is brought on the backs of mules, and the num- 
ber of mules so employed is considerable, as the field is enor- 
mous. The chimney is built at a distance from the house, and 
is very tall. The horizontal flue dries the fuel. Don Lucas 
takes the Correo de Ultramar, published in Paris. It is so 
rare to find a man who takes a paper here that the fact is worth 
mentioning. 

The house at La Puerta stands on a very pretty table of land, 
at the foot of which, toward the Fusagasuga, lie the cane-fields 
and mill. It is not a pretty house, but rather a collection of 
huts. The plain on which it stands slopes to the west. It is 
very uniform in character, grassy, stony, and bosky. The whole 
day appeared like a walk for pleasure in a park, only the steady, 
gradual descent seemed too good to last — too much like the 
broad and easy road we are taught to shun. 

My downward way had an unexpected termination, like many 
another. The path entered a clump of trees, and in a single 
rod I found myself almost surrounded by an abyss. I was on 
a point of land which had narrowed imperceptibly, till before 
me lay the Boqueron. This gorge appeared from Fusagasuga 
like a narrow plain between two hills, for the spot where I now 
stood seemed a part of it. Now it lay beneath me, a narrow, 
crooked chasm, just admitting a river to pass it. 

I descended, crossed the united streams from the mountain 
spurs by a bridge of poles, and in a few rods farther came to the 



316 NEW GRANADA. 

Suma Paz itself, and "waited at the ferry for my mules. I sup- 
pose this ferry is two or three leagues below the Natural Bridge. 
The stream itself is not so mild as to merit the name of Perfect 
Peace, which it borrows from the awful mountain height in 
which it rises. Here, perhaps, is the only spot above its junc- 
tion with the Fusagasuga where it would admit a boat. I 
found it here quite rapid, broad, and over my head. Just be- 
low, after receiving the stream I crossed, it unites with the Fu- 
sagasuga, and below the junction bears both names. It pre- 
serves rather the direction of the Fusagasuga, but the Suma 
Paz furnishes much the larger body of water. As a whole, the 
junction of these three rivers resembles Harper's Ferry, perhaps 
the most romantic spot in the United States. 

A Granadan ferry is a serious event in a day's journey. The 
mules are to be unloaded and compelled to swim, and this is 
said to fatigue them very much. The baggage is to be placed 
in a canoe and ferried across ; all is again to be adjusted to the 
backs of the beasts. The more beasts, of course, the worse the 
detention. Now it fortunately came just at night, and the re- 
loading was but partial. The fare is generally so high as to be 
something of an object to the treasury, to which it falls. Here 
it was a half dime for each person and mule-load. 

"We slept better for having the ferry behind us. There were 
two houses on the bank, and Roque selected the largest. My 
chicken and chocolate were placed on the fire as soon as the 
mules were put at ease, and I finished my dinner before dark. 
I had cut some candles into three pieces ; one of these I now 
lighted, and read till I was sleepy, slung my hammock, and 
found myself more comfortable in it than I could have been in 
any bed in New York. Various hides were laid down on the 
earthen floor for the beds of the family and my peon. This is 
the bed of the Granadan peasant, and he sleeps on it in the 
clothes he wore in the day, and with no other devotions than 
crossing himself. Their practice of smoking in bed is very 
disagreeable to me. 

I rose at daylight, my chocolate was made at once, and while 
the mules were loading I set out. As I intimated, I had to rise 
out of the gulf where I slept. This was pleasant enough for 
me, but a horrible thing for the poor mules. 



BOQUERON DE SUMA PAZ. 317 

At length I reached a point where I must take a last look at 
Fusagasuga. Beneath me lay the junctions of the three rivers, 
and the narrow channel by which they made their way to Mag- 
dalena. Beyond lay the sloping plain on which I journeyed yes- 
terday, and at the farther end the mountains which formed the 
abutment to the plain of Bogota. Far to the right I could just 
distinguish the walls of the basin from which the Suma Paz 
passes by its deep channel beneath the Bridge of Pandi. 

On the left, the long, straight mountain, that formed the right 
bank of the Fusagasuga, had assumed a singular aspect. It was 
naked of vegetation, and black, and almost as regular as the roof 
of a house ; but it was divided into large irregular patches by 
means of vivid green of uniform width, and apparently consist- 
ing of grass without bushes. The rock was of a basaltic color, 
but I believe it is old red sandstone, judging at a distance. 

I turned. My view was limited by other mountain spurs, 
but I could see that the mountain opposite here receded from 
the river, leaving space for a plain of great height and width, as 
green and apparently as perfect as any lawn. Beyond, all was 
shut in with hills, as was also all this side the river, except a 
little valley of palms and tree-ferns. 

In a corner of this valley was hidden a cottage at which I was 
to breakfast. Here I found two or three disgusting women; 
one making cigars with one hand, and holding a babe to the 
breast with the other. On the earth floor were two little girls 
about beginning to walk ; one covered with dirt, the other with 
dirt and rags. Fortunately, I needed nothing from the house, 
and, after finishing my fowl with the aid of the two little mon- 
keys, I went on my way. 

A few ups and downs, and turns, opened to my view the broad, 
torrid valley of theMagdalena, varied by mountains, woods, mead- 
ows, and streams. I can not attempt to describe it. I can only 
say it was "wondrous fair." To this lower level we were now 
to descend just as the day was waxing warm. Now came the 
test. The mula that bore my trunks acted as if she was pos- 
sessed. All along she had been in the practice of running on 
ahead, and when she had gained enough she would lie down, 
putting the peon to the trouble of adjusting her carga each time. 
Now she raced on, and we had enough to do to keep up with 



318 NEW GRANADA. 

her. The streams we passed were numerous, several compelling 
me to denude my feet to wade across. At every stream I lost 
ground. The heat was increasing. At length the beast slack- 
ened her pace, and I entered Melgar ahead of her. 

Melgar is one of those market towns whose existence is a nut 
for politico-economists. Imagine, in the middle of an unculti- 
vated plain, a large town of mud and thatch, with a church, 
chapel, and public square, without a trace of industry. I begin 
to believe the story of two 'cute chaps, who, shut up in a room 
together, swapped jackets back and forth till each had gained 
five dollars. I was desirous that Melgar should gain something 
by me, but I sought meat, eggs, and fruit in vain. I ate here 
an orange, but it was so poor I ate it only out of politeness. 

My mule recovered her spirits in the pause at Melgar. She 
trotted on till she came to a large stream, running, as all the oth- 
ers run, toward the river on my right. She crossed the stream, 
and quietly lay down on her left side, just in the edge of the 
water. My Endlicher, a twenty-dollar book, and the dried plants 
of the last month, were the chief sufferers. It was a long time 
before we came to a suitable place to stop, but we arrived at 4 
P.M. at a very clean house, where I removed the encerado from 
the trunk, and exposed the wet contents to the setting sun. 

I had bought eight eggs for half a dime before reaching this 
house. I sent a quarter dime to another place, and the messen- 
ger returned with a totuma of milk, and the promise of a like 
quantity in the morning. I had sugar with me, and, much to 
the interest of the family, I made a custard in my smaller ket- 
tle, which I put in the next larger, filled with water. A bath in 
the stream, in which my trunks had been dipped above, consum- 
ed the rest of the day. I found my custard creditable to a chem- 
ist, and my hammock all that a hammock should be. 

The master of this family has several peons in his employ, 
but himself goes without clothing from his hips upward. I re- 
marked to him that he certainly bore one mark of a Christian, 
a broad cross of thick black hair along the mesian line and dia- 
phragm. 

We started late in the morning on account of a violent rain 
all night, which ceased about 7, but rendered a stream ahead im- 
passable. Having made another custard and taken my choco- 



PLAIN OF MELGAE. 319 

late, I set forward. Near the stream I stopped at a house, 
breakfasted on my custard, opened my trunks to dry their con- 
tents. The quick eye of a woman who stopped there discover- 
ed an unusual stock of desirables, and she came to me asking a 
present to remember me by. She was one of the last Granadi- 
nas that I would care to remember, or be remembered by, but I 
judged it best to comply, so I gave her a shell of an abundant 
species, which had lost its operculum, telling her that at home 
such a shell would be treasured up with much care. This is 
the first application for a present I have received. 

The water fell slowly, and I gave four men three dimes to 
carry my cargas across. The current was so violent that I could 
not stand in it, but they carried every thing across securely, and 
at dark I reached the banks of the Magdalena. 

The road of this afternoon was diversified by winding round 
the bases of mountains. Two plants here interested me. One 
was of the Cinchonate Order, and had a sprig of small incon- 
spicuous flowers, except that the lower flowers of the raceme had 
each one lobe of the calyx enormously elongated, and colored 
bright crimson. I suppose it to be CalycOphyllum coccineum. 
I have seen it four times in all, but never have been able to save 
decent specimens of it. Those that I have I begged from the 
ornaments of a torch carried one night in honor of Santa Bar- 
bara. The other was a Dalechambia, of the Euphorbiate Order, 
and had what appeared a flower of two red rose leaves. Within 
was a large gland, with some staminate flowers on one side of it, 
and pistillate flowers on the other. 

I passed a bank where a cow was eating clay, apparently pure 
and destitute of any saline taste. The bank had been eaten 
quite away. 

I passed the village of Fusagasuga Ferry, so called because 
the road down the Magdalena there crosses the Suma Paz. I 
kept on my course without stopping, Eoque being half an hour 
behind. I had got twenty rods from the last house, when a 
body of men came running after me, calling to me to stop. I 
asked the reason, but received no answer till they came quite up 
to me, when a respectable-looking gentleman, feeling called upon 
to answer, said that they feared that I would lose my way. I 
replied that I had no fears on that head, and offered to go on, 



320 



NEW GRANADA. 



when they opened on me a volley of questions, which would 
have convinced me, had I doubted, that curiosity is the peculi- 
arity of no sex or nation. In short, the object of this expedi- 
tion was to solve a problem that perhaps had never occurred to 
any member of it before — where a stranger on foot could have 
come from or be going to all alone. I gratified them in this, to- 
gether with my business, aims, and prospects. 

I stopped for the night at a nice-looking house, where the 
peon had to destroy $10 worth of cactus (Dunlap's estimation) 
to make the gateway wide enough for my cargas. The nice- 
looking house was occupied by two unmarried ladies and their 

babies. A hideous goi- 
tred servant had hers 
(I think its father must 
have been blind, but 
you may judge for your- 
self) slung in a ham- 
mock in the room where 
I slept, and she herself 
slept on the floor. 

Here I found that 
my bread, sugar, and 
chocolate had been im- 
mersed in the stream 
we passed. I dined 
on bread and chocolate 
only, with a little sausage. My sleep was a little disturbed by 
two of the babies, which cried in turns, and, after an early choc- 
olate, we repaired to the bank of the Magdalena. 

The river here is about as broad as the Hudson at Albany, 
and much more rapid. The canoe could not take all my bag- 
gage at once, and the delay was so great that it was about ten 
when we left the ferry. After this delay I was not in a humor 
to be fooled with. We were to travel in good earnest, and, if 
the sun scorched or the rain poured, so much the worse. 

And the sun did scorch. "We were traveling south up the 
river, having it on our left, and before us a limitless prairie, in- 
tersected by a few small streams of milk- warm water. The road 
down to one of these was so narrow that the mula contrived to 




GIKL WITH GOITRE. 



PLAIN OF ESPINAL. 321 

fasten her two trunks in the banks, so that to advance or recede 
was impossible. I turned back, and found that Roque had re- 
leased her, leaving the load in the form of a rustic arch across 
the road. While reloading, the macho went on and hid himself. 
We were making up lost time, and the sun was doing its best 
to keep us warm, when we entered Espinal at about 1 or 2 P.M. 
This is one of the prettiest and neatest towns I have seen in 
New Granada, and its shops were of a superior order. But how 
came it posted here, upon the naked, parched, and shadeless 
plain ? 

Making no delay in Espinal, we went on our burning way. 
It was the 14th of January, and if all my friends managed to 
keep as warm as I that day, great must be the virtues of an- 
thracite. In fact, I began to fear that I should kill or cripple my 
beasts ; and at length, meeting cargas that had left Ibague that 
morning, I judged the surest way of reaching my journey's end 
the next (Saturday) night was to relent a little. 

The heat of this day reminds me to speak of my dress. I 
doubt if I could have performed the journey with any boots or 
shoes to be found in New York. The alpargata, which I have 
already described, can not be surpassed in such service. My 
body was just covered with a single thickness of blue twilled 
cotton — the form of the dress almost exactly resembling the ju- 
venile dress in which I gloried in my second year. To this 
was added nothing more than a belt and my hat. 

A traveler makes a funny story out of a robbery he suffered in 
the plains of Mexico. An attempt to rob me would have been a 
better joke, for they left him with more than they could have 
found on me, especially as it devolved on Roque to carry my 
money and settle my bills. Except my hat, compass, knife, belt, 
and spectacles, the value of what I wore, when new, was $1 20. 

I had begun my breakfast for to-day last night in good sea- 
son. I had bought some eggs at noon when waiting for the 
water to fall, and at night beat them up with sugar. I found 
milk at the ferryman's after crossing this morning (a remarkable 
occurrence), and had just cooked my custard, when the peon 
was ready to start. I waited for the first good spot after I left 
Melgar, and breakfasted at 4 P.M. A large custard is not very 
nice after carrying all day tied on a mule's back under a verti- 

X 



322 NEW GKANADA. 

cal sun, but my appetite was good, and it passed for a late break- 
fast, but better than none. Late as it was, it was twenty-eight 
hours before dinner. 

After breakfast I saw the first living snake I have met in this 
country, and as it is a good sign to kill the first snake seen ev- 
ery year, I did so. Before singing any pagans over my victory, 
I may as well give the dimensions of my foe. It was about six 
inches long, and a little thicker than a knitting-needle ; I put 
it into my spirit-lamp to preserve it. 

At dark I arrived at the River Coello. Here I found a tall 
man, naked except a handkerchief about his loins, standing on a 
stone in front of a house, talking with the proprietress. He of- 
fered to take my cargas across the stream on his shoulders. He 
appeared as nearly drunk as I ever saw a Granadino, and with- 
out answering him I went down to the river. He followed me, 
and as I saw there a good canoe, I let him pass. When the 
peon came up he found that there was no authorized ferryman. 
I explained to him that this did not forbid the owner of the boat 
passing us gratis, or, if no other way occurred, I would seize on 
the boat and ferry myself. But it was now night, and there 
was no denying that he and his mules were terribly tired, so we 
returned to the house. 

Here I found a deaf and dumb girl, the first of this class I 
have met. I have before noticed the scarcity of lunatics ; both 
of these classes will probably increase, the latter certainly, with 
increased cultivation of intellect. They were much surprised 
to hear of the education of the deaf and dumb. 

Here I saw a sick babe, and I thought that those who are 
fond of a fling against the medical profession might read a les- 
son from the case. Among the lower people it appears as if the 
dangerous sickness of a child causes little anxiety, and its loss 
little grief; its burial is certainly a scene of rejoicing. It goes 
merrily to the grave with rites entirely peculiar, and bearing the 
name of a little angel. 

I desired nothing after my four o'clock breakfast but choco- 
late and bread. Having repeated the same in the morning, 
as I could buy nothing here, I set forward with no breakfast in 
prospect till I reached Ibague. A young man at the house, to 
save me from the crime of seizing on the boat, offered to ferry 
across my cargas for triple the price the law would allow a fer- 



PLAIN OF IBAGUE. 323 

ryman, and I permitted the peon to accede. I crossed in the 
boat, while Roque undertook to pass the horses below. He 
found it too deep, and I had to swim down and bring them 
across, with him clinging to the tail of the hindermost. He 
could not swim. So, after paying a triple ferriage across the 
river, I had to swim it twice. 

The Plain of Espinal is bounded on the west by steep mount- 
ains of horizontal sandstone, with the Coello at their base. As 
we entered an indentation of the plain, it became stony and a 
little elevated. This was just as the sun lost its power last 
night. As it sunk behind the mountains, we descended to the 
level of the river, and ascended its right bank in a romantic 
glen. After crossing the river this morning, we rose to a nar- 
row plain in the mountains where lies the scattered pueblo of Co- 
ello. Again I descended, reascended, enormously, as it appears, 
though to me it seemed much less than it really must have been. 

Here I found a vast plain in the mountains, stony, in some 
places almost paved, dry, and scant in grass. It resembles 
that of Fusagasuga, but is more level, and is surrounded by 
mountains of entirely different geological character. It is 
bounded on the south by the Coello, which thus skirts two im- 
mense prairies, but shows itself to the traveler only in a broken 
valley between the two. 

I stopped at a venta, where I could get neither milk, bread, 
meat, nor fruits. Eggs and salt I refused, and pressed on. 
Here my peon begged permission to fall behind an hour or so and 
rest his beasts. I consented, added a thin coat to my scanty 
clothing, entered an arm of the plain- between two stoneless 
mountains, and discovered Ibague at 4 P.M., cooped up in a lit- 
tle elevated plain between two spurs of the central Cordillera of 
the Andes. The town lies between the right bank of the Chia- 
pala and the left bank of the Combeima, which here unites with 
the Coello. The Coello is here called the San Juan, and still 
above the Toche. 

The expenses of this trip are rather a curiosity : 

Two beasts and peon $12 00 Eggs $0 10 

Bread 50 Milk 5 

Chocolate 11 Guarapo 11 

Fowl 20 Lodging and incidentals.... 00 

Ferriages of self and cargas 85 Total $13 97 

Candles 5 



324 NE "W GEANADA. 

Excluding what would come under the term of fare in the Unit- 
ed States, all that I could conveniently spend in four days was 
$1 12, and none of this was at places where I spent the nights. 
The peon paid the bill of the mules at the stopping-places, and 
provided for himself according to his fancy. He is bound to 
pay his own ferriage ; and if the beasts are aided by the boats 
in swimming, he pays also for that, but the owner of the car- 
gas pays the ferriage of them. 

Although in these five days I saw no floor but earth, and but 
few tables (those not spread, except with my coarse utensils), 
no beds but dried hides, neither teacup, tumbler, metal spoon, 
looking-glass, newspaper, book, or pamphlet, it was one of the 
most delightful trips I have ever taken. When I found before 
me an ascent, I rejoiced. It promised me prospect and coolness. 
When I came to a descent, I rejoiced. It led to new trees and 
a purling brook. When I came to a plain, I wished I had a 
horse, to fly more quickly over it, but it would only have been 
to wait the longer for the mules. Had I been taken lame or 
sick, a horse could easily have been procured at any stage of the 
journey. And now I have proved my power of walking in the 
tropics, though I had been repeatedly assured I should find it 
impossible to walk. 

I arrived in Ibague on the afternoon of Saturday. Unluck- 
ily for the gentleman to whom I had a letter, I caught him in 
town, where he keeps in his house a dependant, a servant, and 
his little son, who attends school. He resides, with the rest of 
his family, in the country. Had his family been living in town, 
perhaps he would have been glad of company ; had he been on 
his plantation, he would have escaped entirely. He could have 
kept me in his house, but it would have been only so much 
trouble and expense to be passed to the account of disinterested 
benevolence. Room in his house would have cost him nothing, 
had I sought my meals elsewhere, but that was not to be thought 
of; so he sent his son in different directions with little success. 
Ibague has experienced two or three severe fires in as many 
years, and scarce a house has been rebuilt. In the midst of the 
search, an acquaintance passed the window. " Man," he called 
out, "do you know of a vacant house?" "No," he replied. 
"Will you have the goodness to look for one for my friend?" 



POSADA AT IBAGUE. 325 

"Why not, man?" was his cheerful reply. By the time the 
weary beasts arrived, the task was accomplished, the eating-place 
found, and all I had to do was to direct the unloading of my 
mules, and go to dinner about 8 P.M. 

I fancied myself master of a large, deserted house. In a suite 
of three small rooms I found a bedstead of the usual construc- 
tion — an ox-hide stretched like a drum-head on a square frame. 
This was all the furniture of the three rooms. The middle one 
had a door, the others windows, differing from doors only in 
having a grating to prevent entrance when open. Here I put 
my baggage, and slung my hammock in the parlor. I retired, 
sole inhabitant as I supposed, leaving the doors open for Roque. 
In the night I heard a tramping and clanking like that of a Ger- 
man ghost dragging his chain. It was not a ghost, but a man 
who arrived from the country, and was making his way, jing- 
ling his spurs at every step, to an adjoining apartment. 

Daylight showed that some rooms were used as a carpenter's 
shop, and others by the proprietress (who kept a grocery) for pre- 
paring chocolate, baking bread, etc. Two or three fat hogs pass- 
ed from the front door to the back yard when it pleased their 
fancy ; the midnight comer's horse had the zaguan for his sta- 
ble, with similar liberty of ingress and egress. The very hens 
flew out of the parlor windows when any thing in the plaza in- 
vited them. All was liberty, except for a fighting-cock who was 
tied to a stone in the patio. 

Where I ate, several others also ate their solitary and some- 
times scanty meal. They were young gentlemen, employed in 
offices in town. Of these chaotic meals I desire to retain no re- 
membrance farther than that they cost me exactly 4 dimes per 
day. Latterly there were added to our number two others, des- 
tined to be my fellow-travelers all next week. 

Sunday is market-day in Ibague ; but the market is scantier 
than that of Fusagasuga, a town of half the size. Besides the 
market, the other institutions of the Sabbath are two masses, a 
cock-pit, and billiard-saloon. 

The limits of authority are very vague here, but the priest 
seems to have no protection from the lowest. The priest of 
Ibague preached a sermon on the Sabbath that the governor did 
not like. He wrote him a letter about it. About the 1st of 



326 NEW GRANADA. 

January, 1852, the priest of Ambalema received eight dimes of 
a young woman whose child he baptized ; the jefe politico wrote 
to him to return the money. If a priest wishes to absent him- 
self for four days, the governor ordains that he shall apply for 
leave to the alcalde of his parish. Thus the poor priest has 
three civil masters (four including the President), with an eccle- 
siastical head besides. The worst of it is, he receives contra- 
dictory orders, and is punished for disobedience of either. 

Two interesting documents were read by the priest in the 
church at the Sabbath mass, both of which he kindly gave me. 
One was the Allocutio of Pius IX. on the affairs of New Gran- 
ada, censuring the action of the government under Mosquera as 
well as Lopez, and pronouncing certain unchristian laws null 
and void. The other was a circular enjoining faithfulness to re- 
ligious duties during the approaching Lent. This last interest- 
ed me chiefly for the signature, of which the annexed is a fac- 
simile : 

Domingo Antonio Riano.^ 




This flourish is called a rubrica, and is the essential part of 
the signature. In a document of many leaves, every one ought 
to bear the rubrica, but the last only requires the name and sur- 
name, and these may be, as in this instance, printed. In Bulls 
for eating meat, I have seen both name and rubrica applied by 
a stamp. The rubrica must have had its origin in the mark af- 
fixed by those who could not write their name, but it is now an 
additional security against forgery. Few are so complicated as 
the specimen above, but some much more so. They are placed 
under the name as well as after it, and no Granadino is satisfied 
with a plain signature and nothing more. 

The public schools of Ibague are the Provincial College, a 
boys' school, and a girls' school. I visited the latter on the 
third day of its session. It was the most pleasant sight I have 
seen in New Granada. The school had been burned out. It 
was now in a clean, new house. The girls were all seated on 
the floor in clean dresses, and as still and orderly as could be 
desired. Sewing and praying are two important branches in 



SCHOOLS OF IBAGU& 327 

the female schools here. Fortunately, they were engaged in the 
former. Lately, theology has received a severe check in this 
province. The gobernacion has banished from all the schools 
the catechism of Father Astete, the longest, dullest, and most 
orthodox of all the school catechisms. There are not less than 
three others in the schools, but these are forbidden every day 
but Saturday. Some in these schools learn to pray, but not to 
read. 

The girls in this school were all young — none, perhaps, as old 
as twelve. All were learning to read, but scarcely any two had 
the same book. They were as diverse in their topics as would 
be Baxter's "Saint's Kest," Gunn's "Domestic Medicine," "Re- 
port on the Tariff," Doddridge's " Rise and Progress," and Mor- 
gan's " Masonry Revealed." In one thing they all agreed : 
they were uninteresting to children, with perhaps one exception, 
a book written for the amusement of adults. A scandalous at- 
tack on the banished archbishop has been circulated by the gov- 
ernment, and, it is said, used in schools as a reading-book. I 
do not doubt it, nor that the still more impudent attack on the 
government by the Pope will be found in the same schools. 
Such of the Spanish narratives of the Tract Society as do not 
attack the religion of this country would do good service. One 
of them, "Theophilus and Sophia," was read with much inter- 
est in a school in Bogota. There is here a great want of chil- 
dren's books, and an absolute destitution of school reading-books. 

Nor have they any good geography. In the colegio here it is 
not permitted to study geography till after algebra and geome- 
try. I have a good test question : Where is Patagonia ? Those 
who know are not surprised at my ignorance, as it is in South 
America, of which they suppose me profoundly ignorant. But 
in general I get, even from educated men, the conjecture that it 
is somewhere in Europe. One of the most intelligent of my 
acquaintances was talking to me of our Fishery Question, and 
I was unable to convince him that a British squadron was not 
stationed in Greenland. At this moment he thinks me badly 
posted up in this matter. 

Their arithmetics are a phenomenon for the psychologist to 
explain. I should not dare to write a critique on one of them, 
for it could not be regarded otherwise than as an exaggeration 



328 NEW GRANADA. 

or a caricature. Their slates were all destroyed in the fire, and 
there are no others for sale nearer than Bogota. 

The teacher was a pleasant-looking woman, with two children, 
a club-footed little boy of four or five, and a saucy girl of two. 
She has a husband, too (not a matter of course), Secretary of 
the Jefe Politico, I think with a salary of $192. 

I attended an examination of the Colegio Provincial, but my 
efforts to get an idea of the ordinary routine were in vain. One 
feature I think objectionable : the province paid the board of 
some of the pupils, while others, too poor to pay tuition, were re- 
fused admission. The school edifices were much more spacious 
than necessary, but not in good order. 

The duties of curate here are discharged by a vicar, with a 
nominal salary of $480, and an assistant, at $240. The vicar 
I found a pleasant man, anxious to render himself agreeable. I 
called on him on Sabbath afternoon to return a book that he 
had lent me. I found him dining al fresco. I had dined, but 
ate a piece of an ear of roasted maize and some sweetmeats. He 
then invited me to go with him to the cock-fight. I did not 
consent, but went out with him. We were informed that the 
fight was over, and I went in with him. He was received as a 
boon companion, and immediately set himself to work to get up 
another fight for my gratification. This I thought was carry- 
ing politeness a little too far, but in vain were my protestations. 
I began to tremble for the result, for I would rather suffer any 
thing than be the cause of so much cruelty to two noble birds 
like one that I saw dead at my feet. But the reverend father's 
exhortations did not appear to have as much effect as when in the 
pulpit in the morning, and, to my great relief, I escaped without 
witnessing a cock-fight. 

I was another time at the vicar's house, when he was called 
upon to administer the sacraments to a dying person. I begged 
permission to be present. "With pleasure," said he, "if you 
will only have the goodness, as a favor to me, to walk uncover- 
ed when I am carrying the Holiest." " Oh, as to that," I re- 
plied, throwing my hat in a chair, "do not be uneasy ; the night is 
warm. I will leave my hat here." But neither proving too much 
nor conceding too much satisfies ; so I had to take my hat, and 
enter a tienda till the Great Umbrella was at a sufficient distance. 



EXTREME UNCTION. 329 

Then, Peter-like, I followed afar off, till I came to a crowd kneel- 
ing before a small house. As I entered I took off my hat, of 
course. The small room had "been temporarily divided by a cur- 
tain. Behind it was a neat little chapel, with a bed in it. This 
conversion of half a dingy cabin into a beautiful niche of a chap- 
el, with crucifixes, saints, candles, and flowers, had obviously 
been the result of attentions and loans from the neighbors. Here 
the priest was hard at his work. The confession and absolu- 
tion were all over, and he was praying like a locomotive. You 
can easily tell when a priest is using Latin, which occurs only 
once or twice a year. He reads only about eighty words to the 
minute. But the moment he strikes into a much-used place, he 
gallops off at the rate of 200, or even more. After reeling off 
thus what would cost me an hour to utter, he opened a small me- 
tallic snuff-box, broke off a piece of a wafer, and put it into the 
patient's mouth. More rapid Latin. Then he took a bottle of 
oil ; into this he dipped a silver wire, and, taking into his hand 
a piece of cotton, he applied the oil with one hand, and wiped it 
off with the other. He applied it to the ears, eyes, nose, mouth, 
thumbs, and toes. All this was done in the most expeditious 
manner, and with a nonchalance that implied that the poor fellow 
was used to dying. The moment that the dying man had re- 
ceived the consolations of religion, the good priest and his sacris- 
tan gathered up their traps and were off. That night the car- 
penter was busy making 
a queer-shaped box. It 
H was a coffin for the dying, 
made, one would fancy, 
from a misunderstood de- 
EF= scription of those used at 
A C0FFIN - the North. One of those 

who were keeping the carpenter in good company and good spirits 
was the father of the dying. The cemetery of Ibague was beau- 
tiful 50 years ago, but is now in disgusting disorder. It is fine- 
ly situated on a point of the plain that overlooks the Combeima, 
but is overgrown with weeds and bushes, and the tombs are neg- 
lected and dilapidated. Here they laid that strange-shaped coffin 
next day, for the young man was dead. The priest did not come. 
Ibague is a peon town. Its foreign revenue has been chiefly 




330 NEW GRANADA. 

from cargueros, who carried men across the Quindio Mountains, 
over a road too bad for mules. The road is now improved, so 
that, in the dry season, mules can pass quite comfortably ; but 
there is now increased travel, and cargueros, servants, mail-car- 
riers (on foot), and chasquies are, perhaps, more in demand than 
ever. It bears the same relation to the Quindio that Independ- 
ence does to the Rocky Mountains, except that it is impossible 
so to make arrangements as to avoid paying tribute to it. 
Ibague is the fourth town in the province in population, and in 
wealth the fifth, sixth, or seventh. 

In Ibague fruit is attainable, and often cheap enough. I 
bought oranges at the rate of 72 for a dime. The plain is long, 
and the scattered cottages on it present a beautiful appearance, 
especially when the children are playing in the moonlight. Water 
is accessible ; but we prefer quoting from La Imprenta of May, 
1852 : " The water comes to Ibague from the sides of Tolima 
by a canal which passes through the principal street that crosses 
the town. At every square this canal has a deep opening, in 
which the incautious traveler, who does not understand geogra- 
phy, might breathe his last ; but this is not the worst : the wa- 
ter-carriers, and especially the female members of this profession, 
descend to the bottom of these wells for water, and, having per- 
formed such ablutions as suit their fancy, go their way. How 
clean must the water be when it comes upon the table ?" 

Another interesting chapter of Ibague life is the niguas. Ni- 
gua is the Spanish for Pulex penetrans — the penetrating flea, 
jigger, chigger, or chigoe. This is a microscopic flea, about as 
large as the head or one joint of the leg of our well-known bos- 
om companion. In like manner, she chooses her habitation in 
out-houses, houses where the cruel mop comes not, and the dire 
effects of water are unknown. There she hops about, like oth- 
er damsels, seeking a settlement for life, till, by good fortune, 
she lights upon a human leg, or, still better, foot. She makes 
her way to a toe, and then her fortune is almost secured. She 
penetrates beneath the skin (not under the nail) by means that 
the microscope has not revealed to me. There, like the invalid 
in the Mammoth Cave, she enjoys an unchanging and agreeable 
temperature. She is never destined to know what hunger is ; 
her day of prosperity is come. 



THE NIGUA. 331 

Prosperity in the nigua, as in the human race, works wonder- 
ful changes. The agile damsel of yesterday will be to-morrow 
a shocking obesity : so changed, in fact, that I absolutely failed 
to convince a naturalist friend of the identity. Place around 
the human waist a thousand yards of cotton sheeting between 
the skin and the flesh, and you would have an idea of the dis- 
lodged nigua that I have now beneath my microscope, with a 
white spherical body as large as a small pea, with head and 
arms of the original color and size, invisible to the naked eye. 
She is full of eggs, but it is past my conjecture where their father 
is. Every nigua that enters a toe becomes a mother in a few 
days, if left alone. They may be, like the leech, unisexual, or, 
as in the case of the soft-shelled turtles of Southern rivers, the 
male may pass for another species. 

The farther history of the nigua, happily, I am unable to give 
from personal experience. The young are enterprising settlers, 
and soon remove to a suitable distance from their native spot, 
and, in their turn, find themselves blessed with a numerous 
family of daughters ready to obey the great organic law of 
nature. 

The annals of Natural History tell us of a martyr who tried 
to carry a family of niguas across the Atlantic in his foot. They 
increased beyond his calculation — beyond his power of extermi- 
nation. His leg, upon his arrival, was soon added to the col- 
lection of a surgeon as a unique specimen of great value. 

Where there are niguas, a fortiori, there are fleas. To see 
both in perfection, I am recommended to visit the ancient town 
of Popayan. It is said that when you see a man who can 
catch fleas by instinct, you may be sure he is from Popayan. 
If you see him put his hand into his clothes and draw forth a 
backbiter from exactly between the shoulder blades, you may 
be sure he is a Popayanejo. You draw the same inference 
from his having lost a few toes, or even toe-tails. Popayan is 
the paradise of fleas. Turn an ungreased horse loose in a yard, 
and in half an hour he is frantic. In vain the inhabitants 
bathe two or three times a day : the plague knows no longer 
intermission than till their backs are dry. In going to bed at 
night, you mount a table, toss from you one article of dress aft- 
ter another, whip yourself thoroughly with your shirt, throw it 



332 NEW GRANADA. 

in one direction, and rush for a high-hung hammock in the op- 
posite. I tell the tale as it was told to me, for my desire to vis- 
it Popayan has much abated within a few days. 

It is added that the niguas are, if possible, a more serious 
evil than the fleas there, even destroying life. The victim dies 
covered, or, rather, filled with one colony of niguas, from the 
extremities of the toes to the extremities of the fingers. 

This is a long introduction to a very short story. One day 
that week I had three niguas taken from my toes, the next four, 
and the next five. As I needed my feet for another use on 
Monday, I was a little anxious at first, but I soon reduced the 
number to an average of less than two per day. 

This was the first grand onset of the nigua, and some will 
call it a just penalty for the vulgarity of wearing alpargatas. 
Perhaps so, for I had but one nigua in all the time that I wore 
boots, while, in general, I have since had one or two a week. 
The last general attack was at Honda, and it was equal to the 
first, only that I had become able to extract them myself. 

This is by no means a painful task, and there is a positive 
gratification in it. It is akin to the satisfaction of a good sneeze. 
The irritation of the presence of the insect occasions an itch- 
ing, which is relieved at once as soon as the skillful operation 
is commenced. A pin, needle, or knife-point is used as a probe ; 
an opening is made in the cuticle, and, by a skillful circular 
motion, the cutis is pressed away from the nigua on all sides, 
and then the whole body is extracted, without breaking, if pos- 
sible. It is only in case of great personal neglect that limbs, 
and even lives, are lost. Numbers of lives have been lost so 
in hospitals. The old doctrine of applying the remedy to the 
instrument that inflicted the wound is not believed in here, but 
it would be efficacious: the nigua and the mop can not co- 
exist. 

Ibague is the capital of the province of Mariquita, not by vir- 
tue of size, commercial importance, or central position, but in 
consequence of its climate. With a good bed, this would be per- 
fect. Humboldt says of it, Nihil quietius, nihil muscositis, 
nihil amcenius. I agree with him, save only that I found not a 
single moss in Ibague. It is cooler than its altitude requires in 
consequence of its proximity to the Quindio range, and particu- 



GOBEENACION OP MARIQUITA. 333 

larly to the perpetual snow of Tolima, to the cold paramo of 
Ruiz, and the Mesa de Herveo. 

The Governor of Mariquita receives $1440, the jefes politicos 
of Ambalema and Honda $320 ; the other three, $240 each. 
To this add secretaries and stationery, and the expense of gov- 
erning 86,985 people, exclusive of alcaldes and president, is 
$5835, an item of government patronage unknown to our sys- 
tem, and derived from their old monarchical customs. The 
new Constitution attempts a reformation here. The goberna- 
dor and alcaldes are to be elected by the people, and the office 
of jefe politico is suppressed. 

I found the gobernacion of the province in the house of the 
governor, a young man of unassuming appearance, who rejoices 
in the name of Uricoechea. He was unusually busy, making- 
arrangements for a body of troops which went from Bogota to 
Pasto in October, while the republic of Ecuador expelled the 
Jesuits, and now, finding no farther use for their services, were 
to be quartered a while in Ibague. 

The governor made me a present of a file of La Imjprenta, 
now named Yoz de Tolima, the government paper of the prov- 
ince, and the only one, I think, in the province. It is about 
the size of two folio leaves, and is published once a fortnight. 
Like all the papers of New Granada, Northern readers would 
pronounce it insufferably dull, but to me it is full of interest. 
The cost to the government this year is $1626; and though at 
first I regarded the measure as foolish, I am well satisfied that 
it is a good one. It is divided into official and non-official 
parts. In the former I find the ordinances of the Camara, the 
decrees of the governor, law cases, and important decisions, cir- 
culars to the jefes politicos, and reports from them, examina- 
tions of schools, advertisements of runaway prisoners, and even 
the public documents of districts, when of sufficient interest. 
The non-official part contains every thing else except news. 

I passed the Provincial Prison many times a day, seldom 
without their calling to me from the windows, limosna — alms. 
At length I began to answer, " No tengo limones — I have no 
lemons or limes." At last, one day, I put some limes into my 
pocket, and when they assailed me with " limosna," I gave them 
to the fellow, saying, "Aqui teneis tus limoncitas — here are 



334 NEW GKANADA. 

your limes." They gave me up. The prison was indeed a bad 
one. 

I saw the Camara in session. It has a strong Conservador 
majority, while the gobernador is, of course, a Liberal. What 
I saw here teaches me not to translate the word Conservador 
by Conservative: there are no Conservatives in New Granada 
except fanatic Papists. All the rest deserve the name of De- 
structives, and might be classed into Red Republicans and 
Redder Republicans ; and the Redder men may belong to either 
party, but, except the Golgotas, the reddest I know of are the 
Conservadores of the province ofMariquita. 

This assertion is too important in its general bearings to leave 
it unsupported with facts. I find in the Imprenta eight vetoes 
of Uricoechea in twenty-two days. In four cases the bill was 
passed over the veto, which can always be done by a majority 
of the one Chamber, the most facile of all legislation except by 
an absolute monarchy, and worse even than that. I examined 
these eight cases, and in all I am confident that the gobernador 
(who seemed too young for his office) was right, and the Camara 
wrong. One of them deprived the jefes politicos, who are com- 
pelled to serve and to reside at the Cabecera de Canton, of their 
salaries. They tried to change the name of the province to 
Marqueta, derived from the Marqueton Indians, who once re- 
sided there. Mariquita is a diminutive of Mary. The Supreme 
Court decided that a province could not change its name. 

But my strongest facts relate to taxes. Direct taxes were 
unknown. They voted not only to introduce them, but to rely 
wholly on them at the first experiment. The excise on spirits 
was rented out for some years to come, at a good sum, to a man 
who had unfortunately introduced some ill-judged and costly ap- 
paratus that probably would not pay. From the monopoly the 
province suffered no other inconvenience but that vagabonds 
must work more or drink less. Well, the Camara ordered the 
contract to be rescinded without the contractor's assent, prefer- 
ring to have cheaper rum and less revenue. But the new sys- 
tem, which was invented, not copied (for this is the way with 
all republics), would not work at all. Next year came another 
radical change. All direct taxes were repealed, and the whole 
revenues needed for two years, and for the indemnification of the 



EXPEKIMENTS IN TAXATION. 335 

spirit contractor, were to be raised at once from a tax on the 
exportation of tobacco. This threw all the burdens of the prov- 
ince on the largest town, Ambalema, the great tobacco mart of 
New Granada. The utmost they could hope to effect by this 
would be to drive away the tobacco trade to other provinces, and 
reduce the population of Ambalema from 9731 to less than 5000. 
But new difficulties beset them. At the lowest corner of the 
province, on the Magdalena, stands Nare. Under the new or- 
der of things, no tobacco is exported, and Nare takes it all. It 
seems that the Narenos, men, women, and children, smoke more 
than their own weight of tobacco daily ! The last achievement 
of the Conservadores that has reached me is a sumptuary law 
limiting Nare as to the amount of tobacco it should consume, 
in order that some might be left for exportation. 

I wish I had done with this matter, but, as the hope of all 
parties here seems to be the abolition of all indirect taxes, I 
must tell my reader what a progressive tax is. Their theory 
is philosophical. Taxes are to be paid out of income, and he 
that has no income can pay no tax. No more can he whose in- 
come shall be insufficient for his wants. Property is not taxed. 
A poll-tax is feudalism, barbarism, and slavery. A man needs 
a certain sum — say $100 a year — to live on. He that has less 
than that can pay no tax. If his income be between $100 and 
$400, he can spare 5 per cent, of it very well ; should it be 
between $400 and $2000, he can conveniently spare 15 per cent, 
of it ; and if it exceeded $10,000 a year, he could easily spare 
half of it. This is progressive taxation, only I have copied the 
figures of no one scheme. 

This scheme is designed, you see, for the special protection 
of vagabonds. The thriftless and improvident shall be exempt 
from all burdens to government. Nay, were there but one citi- 
zen in the province of the wealth of an English duke, they might 
exempt all incomes of less than $100,000 a year from taxation, 
and make him alone bear the expense of government. Such 
was the scheme recommended by the editor in the " Voz de To- 
lima," the organ of a Conservador gobernacion ; and I saw a 
similar one recommended by a gobernador of Bogota — a Liberal. 

But, insecure as the property of citizens must be under this 
species of legislation, that of foreigners is not attacked in tins 



336 NEW GRANADA. 

way. True, the province had the same constitutional right to 
raise its revenue on the silver mines instead of the tobacco, but 
they well knew that such a step would have brought a British 
fleet before Cartagena, and therefore it was not to be thought of. 

Another consequence of this theory is, that vast amounts of 
property in the hands of the wealthy escape taxation. Broad 
leagues of land are held by wealthy families, waiting for anoth- 
er generation to buy and settle them. As they produce noth- 
ing, they are not subject to taxation. The addition of a hori- 
zontal tax of one cent an acre on land, and a poll-tax of a dol- 
lar, would relieve all the embarrassments of the treasury, and 
the last would be a benefit to the taxed, but it would be an out- 
rage on theory. 

I speak these things with reluctance. They are the fruit of 
speculations drawn almost entirely from French books and Gra- 
nadinos' brains, wholly uncontaminated by any contact with real- 
ities. Do you wonder at their stupidity in not copying our sys- 
tem of taxation ? Then why does not New York city enjoy the 
benefits of a postal system like that of Berlin or London ? Why 
have we never enacted or even examined the Bankrupt-law of 
England, while in some states solvent men are ruined every year 
by grab-laws ? Why have we still poorer mint-laws than En- 
gland adopted in 1816? Because legislators love the rachitic 
offspring of their own brain too well to adopt the fairest and 
healthiest progeny of any other. 

Ibague is surrounded with beautiful scenery, whether you 
stand and look about you or take rides and walks. I do not 
often ride on my small excursions. I made a trip to Tolima, 
however, subject to the encumbrance of as uncomfortable a mule 
for a botanist as ever I saw. It was not, I am sorry to say, the 
Peak of Tolima that I visited, but only an Indian town a little 
way up the Combeima. This volcanic peak, that has thrown 
its pumice around Ibague, is said to be only three leagues from 
it, but the way is so bad that a visit there costs five days. I 
had time to spare for such a trip, and it could not have been 
better employed; but the damage to my locomotive powers 
made me abandon all ideas of crystallized sulphur, rare plants, 
and volcanic action ; so I only went up to the Indian town 
that does much to supply the market of Ibague. 



TOLIMA. 337 

I followed the plain up a long way, and then descended to 
the lower grounds of the Combeima by a steep, zigzag, paved 
road. The agricultural spirit of the Indians has filled this val- 
ley with little properties and little cottages, and I gladly follow- 
ed the river up to a ford that I was not willing to cross without 
necessity. What with rain, and mud, and the obstinacy of the 
mule, the trip did not pay. 

I bathed in all these rivers, but the best place was found by 
going down the Combeima, and crossing by a frail foot-bridge, a 
little above its junction with the Coello, to that stream. They 
are of about equal size. The Chiapalo is much smaller, but 
warmer and nearer. 

I do not like the Ibaguenos. I have not found so unsociable 
a people in the whole country. Except the attentions that my 
letter of introduction compelled, and the official courtesies of the 
gobernador, neither of which were scanted at all, the only atten- 
tions I received were from the priest. I am sorry for this, for 
there seems nothing wanting to Ibague but good society, or even 
the ordinary amount of Granadan hospitality and sociability. 

In leaving, I had my first and last difficulty about a bill. My 
house-rent was made $1 60 by charging to me all the vacant 
rooms that were accessible to me. I decided to pay only for 
what I had used. Not a symptom of accommodation did her 
ladyship show all the time my packing was going on, till it seem- 
ed to me that I should either leave without paying, or have some 
experience of the Granadan Code of Procedure, which I was not 
unwilling to try. Five minutes before starting, however, the 
terms were reduced to eight dimes. I gave her a dollar, for I 
thought the experiment was worth the balance. It was the 
most quiet quarrel I ever had, for not an unkind word was ut- 
tered in the whole of it. 

Y 



338 NEW GRANADA. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE BACK TRACK. 

A Crash Towel. — Excellent Family. — A Granadan Ghost. — Piedras. — How to ex- 
tinguish a Cigar. — Rio Seco. — Drowning in Dry River. — Neme and Bitumen. — 
Sulphur Water and something stronger. — Granadan drunk and noisy. — Tocai- 
ma , — Sky-roofed Prison. — Fall of Horses. — Juntas de Apulo. — Muddy Rivers 
and muddy Roads. — Anapoima. — Mesa. — Road round a Hill. — Presidio. — 
Hospital. — Surveillance. — Volcan. — School Examination. — Tertulia. — Expe- 
dition to Tequendama. — The Laggards. — Tena. — A cool Drink. — A Fast. — 
Affectionate Reception. 

I AM on the back track this morning. I am on horseback, 
and entangled in with others, so that I am no longer the inde- 
pendent man that I was when on foot, and happy with only- 
three bestias — two quadrupeds and a biped — I crossed the Tier- 
ra Caliente before. Our baggage is off some time since, under 
the charge of a thief, who has already been helping me trans- 
act some of my business. He employed a woman to do some 
washing for me. He assured me that the articles were all safe- 
ly returned ; but I missed a towel — my only crash towel. 

Towels here are generally made of plain cotton cloth, and, 
though often embroidered with red, are not what our wet hands 
demand. This crash was a new article to her, and seemed cheap 
enough to be stolen, and dense enough to be highly desirable, 
so the affair was determined on. It so happened that we ate for 
a day or two at the house where the washer-woman harbored. 
Our horses were at the doors, all bills settled, and we ready to 
mount, when I had the washer-woman called in, and told her 
that I wanted my towel. It cost me great trouble to make her 
understand that it was not a night-shirt, a pocket-handkerchief, 
a ruana that I wanted. The word toalla is not used here, and 
she could not understand its equivalents. Then she went to her 
box, and drew forth article after article. She had got the box 
half emptied; I stood patiently looking on, till out came the 
towel ; she seemed much pleased to find something that I would 
like, and gave it to me with an air of satisfaction that really 



GHOST STORY. 339 

looked like generosity. I felt like rewarding her with a dime or 
two, hut refrained, and thanked her cordially, tied the towel round 
my waist, wished her good-day, sprung into the saddle, and was 
soon out of town. 

I was soon after on the same plain from which I had entered 
Ibague, but on a different side of it. In coming, I had been with- 
in a mile or two of the Coello ; I now took a more southerly 
course, near the Chipalo. Few were the houses on the road, but 
the other side of the river was very beautiful to me, presenting 
a constant succession of houses and farms. Probably the land 
is easier to work there than on this stony plain. 

I soon had another pleasant surprise. We turned into a little 
side path an hour or two from Ibague, and I was suddenly intro- 
duced to the pleasant family of Dr. Pereira. It was remarkable 
for the degree of education to which the younger members had 
attained ; I greatly regretted not having met them sooner. One 
of the sons, Dr. Nicolas Pereira (Gamba), has published a poem 
on Don Angel Lei. The author condemns it as faulty and ex- 
travagant, and he is right. He intends to rewrite it. 

I should have spoken of Don Anjel, and also of that sleepy 
convent of San Diego in Bogota. His body was buried there 
about 1820, the last interment that there has been in the chapel 
of the convent. Lei was an officer in the guard of the Viceroy 
before he turned monk. He had engaged himself to Luisa San- 
doval, one of the belles of the day in Bogota, who died. It is 
possible that her death wrought his conversion, but the tale runs 
in various ways, all different from that. I receive it that he was 
sitting by the side of Luisa at a bull-feast, when he became fas- 
cinated with a new face, irresistible to him. At Sandoval's he 
was dull that evening, and left early. In the street he met the 
unknown, who took his arm with an air of innocence rather than 
boldness. They walked in various directions, and at last cross- 
ed over the Bridge of San Francisco, went one block north, and 
turned down under the bridge between the two convents, and 
entered a splendid house, brilliantly lighted. They saw no liv- 
ing soul. With an infantile affection, she led him from room to 
room. At the earliest dawn he roused himself from a bed of 
guilt and shame, and hastened to the palace to his morning du- 
ties. He had left his watch and sword hung on two ornamental 



340 NEW GEANADA. 

hooks at the bed's head. After breakfast he sought the house 
of the unknown, and found it an old ruin ! He ventured up the 
broken stair, and over perilous floors, till, where the bed should 
have been, he saw his watch and sword suspended from two 
rusty spikes ; but the floor was so broken that they were inac- 
cessible. He left them, hastened away, and became a monk. 

Others say that, on his way home from the spectral house, he 
met a spectral procession bearing the body of Luisa ; others 
again, that he found his watch and sword hanging on two human 
bones projecting from the walls of the cemetery ; others still, 
that he awoke that morning with a skeleton in his arms. Where 
there are monks there will be fables. But ghosts and fairies 
seem to all to be of Northern origin. The scarcity of them, or 
their absence from Southern Europe, needs to be inquired into. 
I asked the Spanish of ghost, and they thought that alma ben- 
dita — blessed soul — came nearest to it. This supernatural girl 
they called an hada. 

Dr. Gamba has the best floor that I have seen in New Gran- 
ada. It is of some calcareous cement, that unites the two excel- 
lences of being hard and not inclined to crack. As no wooden 
floors are to be thought of, it is quite desirable that something 
that can be kept clean, as rammed earth can not, and that shall 
be more agreeable than bricks, should be found for this use. I 
fear, however, that, in most places, lime will be found beyond 
the means of the peasantry, but with good roads bitumen would 
be attainable over the whole country. 

With young Pereira's Anjel Lei in my pocket, we were soon 
on the plain again. We went northeast toward a high, detach- 
ed hill, behind which lay Piedras. A detached range of steep 
hills ran due north, separating this inclined plane from the low- 
er horizontal plains on the banks of the Magdalena. This range 
we approached obliquely. The whole plain might be called 
piedras — stones — only there is said to be, at a place called Cua- 
tro Esquinas, an intermission of them ; but if so, I passed it 
unnoticed. 

It was dark when we struck into the gorge between the hills, 
crossing quite a stream twice. It was the Opia ; and we were 
finally on the left bank of it, but on ground much higher than 
its bed. We had some difficulty in finding posada, but at length 



PIEDRAS. 341 

we joined ourselves to some others, "bound also to Bogota, and 
secured a sala to ourselves. It was rather warm, especially aft- 
er the cold nights of Ibague. Water was scarce with us, and, 
thirsty and tired, I was glad to get into my hammock. Most of 
our party slept in the piazza till a night-rain drove them in. 
Then I had almost to fight with a cigar, that I could not endure 
in-doors in so crowded a room. It was only as I was about to 
employ all the water that we had left in extinguishing it where 
it shone, that, to save this waste of water, the smoker abandon- 
ed his cigar. Next day it turned out that the annoyance was 
from an impudent servant, and I was sorry I had not thrown 
the water without the warning, for it is a breach of all decorum 
for a servant to smoke in the presence of superiors. He was 
only carrying out the familiar Spanish proverb that " in the dark 
all cats are gray." 

Next day I went to a steep hillock, just out of town, for 
plants, and was struck with the movements of two black birds 
with long tails. They were following the motions of a hog. 
They kept on the ground a yard from him, one on each side, 
and following him as faithfully as his shadow. This they did 
for a long time. I conjectured that they were picking up fleas 
that left him. 

Piedras stands on a table of land an hour or two from the 
Magdalena. It consists of thatch houses mostly, or, properly, 
huts. On the Plaza resides a character that I had a strong de- 
sire to see when it was too late. He was described to me as a 
man of great wealth, sense, liberality, and eccentricity. After 
leaving, I was shown a distant hill, crowned with what I should 
have taken for a German castle, but they told me it was built 
as the last resting-place for his family. Much of his liberality 
is said to be in secret. 

We had a long descent to the ferry of Opia, so called because 
it is at the mouth of that river, and there we were detained some 
hours. Here I noticed a sand-bank washing away at the rate 
of some inches per minute. The baggage of an incautious trav- 
eler might easily be swept off so. I would have been glad to 
spend a part of this long interval in bathing, but a wholesome 
fear of the raia — a ray-fish, with a formidable sting — detained 
me. As we rose from the river on the east side, I found abun- 



342 NEW GRANADA. 

dant specimens of Melocactus, or Mammillaria, a plant I have 
seen nowhere else out of green-houses. A dense patch of it 
would he impassable. 

At length we came out to cultivated grounds. Here we 
found the most luxuriant feed I have ever seen in all my trav- 
els. The price was a cuartillo per beast for a night. We were 
on the banks of the infamous Rio Seco. Its name is a stupen- 
dous lie : instead of being dry, it was as full as it could hold. 
I found a friend of a friend waiting for it to fall. He had wait- 
ed till he was tired, had examined the river, and, much against 
my wishes, they all decided to advance after we had been there 
an hour. 

I stood and trembled on the bank, while some precious col- 
lections found their way across dry, as I then supposed ; but, 
unfortunately, when the evil was past remedy, I found the dam- 
age was serious. To be ready for emergencies, I had disen- 
cumbered myself of clothing before my cargas entered the river. 
I then left my horse in care of a servant, and walked across, as 
I do not like entanglement in any difficulty. A rare and inter- 
esting tree overhung the bank where I came out, and I was 
eagerly stripping it of its flowers, when I heard some one coolly 
remark, "That boy will drown." I turned round, and saw a 
boy of about twelve rapidly washing down stream, and none 
were moving. I plunged in, and brought him out, scarce able 
to stand from fatigue and fright. Catholics, I think, are less 
impressed with the loss of life, as, the sooner one dies, the less 
they are apt to suffer in Purgatory. 

We followed up the left bank of Rio Seco till dark, when we 
reached a good posada at Neme. JVeme means bitumen, of 
which there are copious deposits in some parts of New Grana- 
da. I saw traces of it north of Ibague, but none here. At 
Mendez, a little above Honda, there are immense deposits of it. 
A patch or two of sidewalk, and a little of floor, in Bogota, are 
the only instances of its use that I have seen. Here we met a 
large company of travelers bound west, and our two parties had 
a good time generally. In this I could not share, on account 
of the labor my plants demanded, and the exhaustion caused, I 
verily believe, by the anxiety I had while my treasures were 
braving the fury of that infamous Dry River. 



TOCAIMA. 343 

In the morning, instead of keeping the left-hand road, that 
had half a dozen or a dozen more crossings of Rio Seco to make, 
we took another. We were rising a little out of the Seco val- 
ley, when we stopped more to commemorate our fast than to 
break it. In fact, things were looking a little like famine. We 
ate some roasted bananas, so insipid as to seem innutritious. 
The inhabitants of the little hut strip off a certain kind of bark 
for tying bundles of tobacco and cigars. They had nothing that 
they could sell us. Farther on I collected a most singular fruit 
of a tree or vine that I snatched at in riding past. I mistook 
the follicles for floral leaves until better informed. Soon I came 
to a large stream of sulphur-water, that diffused its odors for a 
great distance. Hasty as was my exploration of this, it was an 
hour before I overtook my company again. 

We had risen over an immense ridge, and had descended 
again into the valley of the Bogota, when I overtook them at a 
place where spirits and guarapo were sold. A mixture of the 
two was passed round and pronounced excellent. 1 stopped but 
a few moments, and hurried on, that I might have more time to 
loiter. In an hour they overtook me, and the friend of my 
friend was "roaring drunk." He raced, shouted, reeled, till he 
seemed past recovery — caught his predecessor's beast by the tail, 
and cut more antics in one half hour than usually occur in New 
Granada between one earthquake and the next. It is contrary 
to nature here to be otherwise than stupid and quiet in drink. 
I am assured that he drank but moderately, but I have always 
had a prejudice against moderate drinking of intoxicating liquors. 
Especially I wish to see no more experiments of thirsty men on 
guarapo and rum mixed together. By the time we had entered 
Tocaima he had subsided into a quiet gentleman again. 

Purgatory has been called the Tocaima of the future world. 
I must say it is warm at Tocaima, especially considering its el- 
evation. No warmer spot is known for a hundred miles. It 
was midday when we arrived, and Tocaima was doing its pret- 
tiest. We waited an hour or two. Tocaima looks like a de- 
cayed town. I went out to explore, and saw a roofless house 
with barred windows. This pen was the prison. I think there 
was shelter from rain in some part of it. Opposite this was a 
ruined convent. 



344 NEW GRANADA. 

As soon as the heat would permit we proceeded, and at length 
reached the banks of the Bogota. It was swollen, and of a hid- 
eous blackness, rolling mud as fluid as water. Its waters pass 
over decomposing shales and carboniferous strata. If Kio Sucio 
is nastier than this, I hope never to see it. I find we have 
not taken the best road for a tourist. There is a hill of enor- 
mous height, called the Volador, hereabouts, and the riding- 
beasts might have been got over there, by favoring them a little, 
in less time. As we followed up the Bogota, one horse gave out 
entirely, and was sold. Several of us took to our feet. I was 
walking along leisurely, when three beasts before me turned into 
an open gate, and went up a steep path through a pasture. I 
followed, caught the rear one, and mounted. The others reach- 
ed a closed gate at the top, and followed a fence along in the 
same direction that the road went below. I followed, and just 
was reaching out my hand to seize the bridle of one, when I saw 
them both slowly sink before my eyes in a thicket of bushes. 
I gave the alarm to the owner, and urged him to go with me and 
get help at a house at the top of the hill. He believed there 
was no danger ; it was now dark ; the posada of Juntas was 
just around the hill ; he would send back a baquiano (one ac- 
quainted with the spot) from there. So we went on. We pass- 
ed a land-slide — derrumbe — at a risk of ourselves sliding down 
into the dirty river, and soon arrived at the best posada I have 
seen in all the land. 

The landlord (posadero) assured us that there was no such hole 
as I thought I saw, and that a servant would doubtless find the 
horses quietly feeding there. He went, and did not find them. 
Next morning a peon was sent toward Tocaima for them, and 
was gone some hours. Breakfast was over, and my friend learn- 
ed that the pasture was bounded on one side by a cliff nearly 
perpendicular. Half way down that cliff, in plain sight of their 
fellows at the door of the posada, stood the two horses within 
musket-shot of us. How they got there alive, or how they were 
to be taken down or up except piecemeal, was more than I could 
tell. I was glad to see the owner shed tears. But in half an 
hour the truants were down, making a hearty breakfast, and I 
was off. 

This place has something of a historical interest. In May, 



DISSERTATION ON MUD. 345 

1851, the Dictator Urdaneta found himself with a veteran army 
to support him, and an almost unanimous nation against him. 
His friend, Garcia Delrio, met General Lopez, since President, 
and made a treaty with him, which resulted in the re-establish- 
ment of Vice-president Caicedo in the supreme power. When 
the Congress refused to permit to Urdaneta's friends the advant- 
ages promised in that treaty, Caicedo retired from office, and 
Congress appointed General Obando in his place. 

Juntas means junction. Here the dirty Apulo meets the dirty 
Bogota. At this posada money can procure, for man and beast, 
all that travelers need. Rings are placed in the wall (as I learn- 
ed in the morning) for hanging hammocks. The hanging of mine 
is often quite a task, and was so here. The posadero is a So- 
corrano. Socorro is the Yankeedom of New Granada. Here I 
passed a wooden bridge, eight feet wide, roofed with zinc, over 
the Apulo, and rose at once to a great height on a tongue of land 
between it and the Bogota, though a much better road might 
be made nearer the Bogota without rising. Here the road was 
abominable from steepness and from mud. There are two grades 
of muddy road. One is almohadillado, or pillowed. It has 
ridges running across the road, about two feet from crest to crest. 
These are of hard, slippery earth, and the mule steps over them, 
putting his feet down into deep mud holes between. These 
ridges lie like pillows (almohadillos), with mud holes between. 
They have been called mule-ladders in English. A man can 
walk on them, but if he slips he goes in deep. Some horses, 
lightly estimating the value of their riders' necks, will walk on 
them, in spite of your fears. 

On almohadillado you can make more than a mile an hour, at 
the worst ; but it may degenerate into an atascadero, that is, 
the ridges may be reduced to uniform mud of indefinite depth. 
The holes in almohadillado can be no deeper than the length of 
a mule's legs. An atascadero, when it becomes impassable to 
the strongest beast, grows no deeper. That is a consolation. 
Neither almohadillado nor an atascadero can exist where the 
steepness of the road exceeds 45°. The place of both is there 
supplied by a resbaladero, or sliding-place. Some magnificent 
specimens of resbaladero are said to be a rod long, steep as the 
roof of a house, and as smooth as an otter-slide. I have never 
seen fair specimens of this. 



346 NEW GRANADA. 

By the time the reader has mastered in sound and sense 
these three slipper y and sticky Spanish words, he may imagine 
me to have contended with the realities, to have met an im- 
mense drove of mules carrying masses of salt in coarse nets on 
their way from Cipaquira to Popayan, nearly 300 miles, and to 
have descended into an enormous hollow. Here I took a nice 
bath, and was again high up the hill at a venta when the first 
of my party overtook me. We toiled on, and did not all unite 
till we had reached Anapoima. 

A nice place is Anapoima. It has a good posada for the 
rich, a free tambo for the poor, and a venta for both. , We fared 
sumptuously here. The enterprising proprietor has, among 
other things, a blacksmith's shop and an English smith, and 
back of his house, down toward the Bogota, here in sight be- 
neath you, but out of hearing, a cane-field, no doubt, and a cane- 
mill. I particularly noticed a vine in his patio. I see no rea- 
son why it should not do well here, only the grape will not 
succeed well without care. 

Here I mounted again, and we soon were on our way. A 
more pleasant road than I had lately seen ran along a ridge till 
it began to ascend another steep hill. At the left there was a 
private residence so surprisingly like a convent — chapel, bell- 
tower, and all — as to deceive a practiced eye. The road up the 
hill itself was paved, but the moment you reach the top you 
Strike a straight macadamized street running a mile or two up 
a gentle grade. It is the principal street of the town of La 
Mesa de Juan Dias. This mesa is a plain or table-land, 
bounded by abrupt descents in every direction. The principal 
street runs near the northern edge, where beneath flows the 
Apulo. The task of descending to it is very severe. South of 
the town are fields. These, too, end abruptly by an even 
steeper descent to the Bogota. The table was once connected 
by a ridge with the grand ascent to the plain of Bogota, but 
that ridge too has sunk far below the table, and in the depres- 
sion stands the town of Tena. 

It seems as if Mesa ought to be without water. In fact, 
rain water is used to a considerable extent, but there is quite 
a spring just south of the town, where washerwomen congre- 
gate. It is one of the highest spots in which oranges grow. 



LA MESA. 347 

I had no thermometer with me, hut I have a strong suspicion 
that the temperature is put too high by Caldas, 72.5°. Mos- 
quera gives it even three degrees higher. I think it must he 
near 70°. The difficulty of access to bathing-places seems to 
be the chief objection to Mesa as a place to go from Bogota to 
change climate. It is free from the clouds of Guaduas, and the 
climate to me is delightful. 

' We found a delightful and pleasant home in the family, not 
merely the house, of Senor Juan Triana, now no more. Don 
Juan spoke English enough for all necessary purposes, and his 
amiable lady was a well-educated Granadina. Her name is 
Manuela Caicedo : she was born in Choco, or in the Cauca. 
Her table, spread in the patio under an awning, was the best 
that I have seen in New Granada. 

At her table I met the Gobernador, Justo Briceiio. The three 
cantons of Mesa, Fusagasuga, and Tocaima then constituted the 
province of Tequendama, and Mesa was the capital. A more 
efficient officer than Briceno could not be found. He was first 
appointed by the President, and, at the change of Constitution, 
elected by the people. He was particularly interested in high- 
ways, and needs nothing more than the practical knowledge of 
a northern teamster to make him all that could be desired. We 
passed, on the road to Tena, a piece of new road that ran round 
a hill. It was clear that the old road on the ridge could be 
mended for less than the new, shorter, level road would cost, and 
they called him crazy for encountering the extra expense. I 
went over the hill from curiosity. The ascent and descent were 
prodigious, as bad as the worst in some New England counties. 
The mule-ladders were beautifully developed. And the dis- 
tance was double. I wish New Granada had more crazy road- 
makers. 

The fine road through the streets of Mesa is at the cost of 
the nation. The province is not obliged to spend a dollar on it, 
but it might exact toll of all that pass over it. Every carga 
of molasses that enters Bogota from here pays a toll at Puente 
Grande to the province of Bogota. Briceno sees the impolicy 
and injustice of such impositions. He is extending this good 
road up to the plains of Bogota. It is not intended for a wheel- 
road, and, I fear, will, in some places, be too steep. 



348 NEW GRANADA. 

A detachment of the Presidio is making the road. I saw one 
company near Tena, and another a little east of La Mesa. The 
troops that guard them are part of the regular army, and are 
under the command of the governor. The prisoners sleep in an 
ordinary cottage, and, by day and night, have no other wall 
around them than lead. They beg of the passers-by on every 
occasion. Senor Triana was contractor for furnishing the pre- 
sidio with food and drink. They drink large quantities of 
guarapo. We drank the same at the table. 

The Hospital of the province and that of the presidio were one 
and the same. It is an ordinary cottage of two or three rooms 
and a kitchen. Things there could not well be worse. In the 
kitchen were no conveniences for cooking. The floors are in- 
fested with niguas, so that they destroy life. Half the cases 
here were large superficial ulcers. The governor is sure that 
they are not made on purpose, but I must doubt. 

I was in the Gobernacion one day, when a man came in, who, 
addressing the secretary, Senor Guzman, said, 

" I am here, Senor." 

" Very well ; where have you been?" 

" I have been at work on the estate of Don Fulano." 

" Will you continue there ?" 

"I shall for the present." 

" Very well ; come again this day two weeks." 

The secretary had opened a book and made a record of the 
interview. 

" Who was that ?" I asked. 

" It is a man condemned to a certain period of prison and 
another of surveillance — vigilancia. His imprisonment has ex- 
pired, but he can not pass certain bounds, and we must see him 
regularly, and know where he is and what he does." 

"What trouble to you and him! We have not in the En- 
glish language such a word even as surveillance. We use the 
French. Had he been at the North, he might perhaps have been 
let off on condition of never coming again where he is known." 

The secretary stared. " And do you think a rogue does less 
damage where he is unknown ?" 

" No, I can not say that ; but then the evil that he does will 
not harm us." 



SUBTEERANEAN FIRE. 349 

" Ah ! that indeed," and the good official shrugged his shoul- 
ders, as if to say, "That plan is good enough for heretics." 

I went to the provincial prison to see a noted presidario of 
good family, Francisco Morales. He had entered into a plan 
with a doctor and a judge. They had poisoned a priest of Bo- 
gota, held a coroner's inquest on his body, administered his 
estate, and robbed it. The robbery only could be proved, and 
Pacho Morales, as he is called, was condemned to the Presidio. 
He has worried poor Briceno terribly. He asks whether any 
arrangement could be made at our best prisons to accommodate 
so refractory a fellow. He has not succeeded in getting a stroke 
of work out of him yet. 

Once he commenced abusive and seditious declamations. A 
trumpeter was stationed by him, and commanded to blow every 
time he tried to speak. He chained him to a post, and has 
punished him to the last extent he dare, and now Pacho shams 
sickness. I wish I were his doctor a little while. I found him 
with his window toward the street stopped up (a great griev- 
ance), and a sentinel in sight of him continually. He was quite 
penitent, as he would have me think, and asked me for a Bible. 
Don Justo is fearing that he will make his escape. 

One day I crossed the Apulo to see a volcan on the opposite 
slope, on the road to Anolaima. An immense descent brought 
me to the river, eight inches deep, and charged with black mud. 
A similar height was to be gained on the north bank. Here I 
found a scene of transcendent interest — a glacial motion of hot 
stones and earth. I took off my alpargatas, lest I should be 
betrayed to a place too hot to escape from. I could walk over 
most places. A pale smoke was issuing from some spots. The 
glow of fire is seen from some such places in the night. The 
slide was five or ten rods wide, and was advancing into a 
thicket of trees, overwhelming them at the rate of two or three 
feet a day. The sides of the fire-glacier, so to speak, were 
smooth, and grooved with the masses that had traveled down. 
The steepness was about that of steep carriage-roads. I sup- 
pose the sliding is due to the spontaneous ignition of pyrites in 
the depths below, and the slow combustion of coal. Such phe- 
nomena are said to be more active in wet weather, which fur- 
nishes water to the pyrites. 



350 NEW GRANADA. 

When it shall have advanced a dozen or two rods more, it will 
reach a small pond that must have had some similar origin. It 
is not deep, for I waded in some way ; Tout they tell me that 
there is a treasure in the centre, in a large cauldron (funda), 
with another cauldron reversed over it. They can not get off 
the cover. So said some peasant women living near, who urged 
me to take some refreshment with them, and were the more ear- 
nest when I told them that I had no money with me. The spot 
was not two miles air line from Mesa, but I found my trip a very 
fatiguing but interesting day's walk. 

These phenomena are frequent, and I am coming to the con- 
clusion that all the rough, irregular valleys west of the Sabana, 
and, perhaps, on all the western slope of the Cordillera de Bo- 
gota, are the work of similar decomposition. Signs of this must 
be sought by a man of more leisure than I have been. 

I attended an examination of the public boys' school. The 
same faults I had noticed before were too plain here ; all was 
rote, and no thought. I picked out the smartest boy, and when 
he went to the black-board, I handed to the gobernador the sum 
of " the hare and the greyhound." The hare starts eighty varas 
before the hound, and runs twenty varas a minute, while the 
hound runs twenty-five. Seiior Briceno said no boy in school 
could do it. It passed from my hands to my neighbor's, and 
then the master asked for it. He left the examination in the 
hands of the committee, and bent all his energies on the sum. 
In ten minutes he had an answer, but it was wrong. 

I attended a tertulia, or evening visit, in La Mesa. I hope I 
wrong no one in saying I thought it tedious and stupid. The 
ladies, who were pretty in the main, took possession of a corner 
of the room that just held them, and maintained it. The gen- 
tlemen formed a line, from one end of theirs to the other, through 
the middle of the room, but so that each person spoke only to 
his next neighbors. No general conversation went on, and none 
across the circle. A couple of ladies went out a few moments, 
and I exhorted the Governor, who was apt for such encounters, 
to interpose his person in the vacancy, and break their phalanx 
for the evening. He attempted to do so, but the ladies, return- 
ing, claimed their places in such a manner that he had to yield. 
I attempted to engage a lady in conversation, when I found my- 



A GRANADAN EXPEDITION. 351 

self at one end of our line, but I could get nothing but common- 
places (the Spanish is poor in monosyllables), and gave up, in 
fear of being regarded as impudent or ill-mannered for convers- 
ing with a lady. 

From Mesa I started for the Falls of Tequendama. "We had 
in company Governor Briceiio, and two young men who had 
never seen the Salto. A servant and sumpter mule completed 
the train. We started late, of course. Briceno and I went on 
slowly to Tena, five or six miles, and then we waited for the 
rest hour after hour. They arrived about sunset, and we went 
on by the light of a full moon to pass the night at a hacienda. 
We lost our way, and had a horrible time. The road was hardly 
fit for quadrupeds, even by daylight. We began to feel the want 
of our dinner. My horse fell down a bank. How he got out, or 
why I went not down, I could not see, for it was dark. At length 
we came to where a torrent tumbled over a pile of stones ; wheth- 
er it was in the road or out, we knew not, but we could not pass 
it. We turned back, and, after an hour more of dismal wander- 
ings, we came to the Hacienda of Saragoza, and stopped there. 

Our beasts were scarcely put up or turned loose when the 
owner came from Bogota, and we got up quite a dinner, and by 
eleven we were taking a nap. This lasted till three, and then 
we were on our way, with a baquiano to guide us. He led us 
to and over the pile of stones — a perilous task in the dark, and 
thus on. Early in the morning we passed the ruins of San An- 
tonio. It was a town of which the site had been carried off by 
a volcan or fire-slide. The whole face of the country had 
changed, and all we could see of the ruins was a bit of the cor- 
ner of the church, half a mile, it is said, from where it was built. 
A rugged, naked valley occupies the place of the plain on which 
San Antonio stood. 

A little farther on we paused to take something, I really can 
not tell what. Then one of the laggers called out to the guide, 
"Baquiano, be spry now; a real if you will run." On we 
started : in ten rods we came to a house and a pretty girl, and 
the two worthies must stop and ask her some questions. We 
followed on with the guide up a long hill, and past some scat- 
tered houses, and an Indian settlement called Curzio. But our 
laggards came not, and we had no alternative but slowly to ad- 



352 NEW GRANADA. 

vance. Meanwhile, we asked repeatedly for a guide to the foot 
of the falls, but in vain : all assured us that no man could 
reach the spot. About nine we reached a point whence the 
falls were visible. It was the hill top at the head of the zig- 
zag path mentioned on page 279, and our course to the falls is 
described in the succeeding pages. 

It was the middle of the afternoon when, returning from the 
head of the fall, we again reached this spot, and there we saw 
our two truant friends, who were now enjoying their first and 
last view of Tequendama. This glimpse of the upper part of 
the falls at a distance was all the reward they had for a ride of 
three days. When they left the pretty girl (how long they 
stopped they did not say), they mistook their road from that 
very spot. They did not discover their mistake till they were 
in sight of the Sabana. Here they hired an Indian girl to 
guide them, and they had caught their first glimpse of the falls, 
and the last, perhaps, for their lives, just as it was time to re- 
turn to Saragoza, where we had left all our bedding, etc. 

We stopped at the first cottage to do what we could to ap- 
pease our hunger. I soon left them there, and started on foot, 
reviewing deliberately and carefully the scene of the catastro- 
phe of San Antonio. At dark I was near Saragoza, and, for 
the third time, threaded in darkness a trail through the woods 
that lay between the house and the little footpath that they 
called highway. Our kind host bade a servant wash my feet, 
and ordered dinner. Before it was ready the party arrived, 
two of them rather crestfallen. Their delays had spoiled the 
whole expedition, and they had reaped a corresponding part of 
its benefits. Don Justo had visited the Salto repeatedly, and 
appreciates it as much as any Granadino I know. 

Our host brought bitter complaints from Bogota of sacrile- 
gious laws. From the priests had been taken away the mo- 
nopoly of marriage, and even the right to marry, as each mar- 
riage had to be acknowledged before the District Judge. I 
tried to make him see that the judge did no more than give the 
certificate, which the priest gave before when he was a civil 
officer; but he insisted that it were better to leave their chil- 
dren to the consequences of legal illegitimacy than to receive a 
certificate of marriage from unconsecrated hands. 



TENA. 353 

On the morrow we had one of the earliest Granadan break- 
fasts I have ever eaten, and we were on our way soon after nine, 
and in due time drew up in the patio of the antique great-house 
of Tena. 

Tena would be a fine place to rusticate, only it has no socie- 
ty and no market. It is warm, and has plenty of water. It 
stands on the ridge that extends from Mesa to the base of the 
plain, and has the land sloping off rapidly down to the heads of 
the Apulo on the north, and the banks of the Bogota on the 
south. From here the road rises rapidly to the plain at Barro 
Blanco. 

I took a good bath just after leaving, the last I could enjoy 
before descending again, however many I might endure. I 
climbed on foot, or rather walked up, for the steepest kind of a 
carriage-road reaches nearly up — as far as the presidio has work- 
ed. It might be made, with good engineering, a carriage-road all 
the way; but as no carriage ever went up a hill in New Granada 
except on men's shoulders, it will not probably be located where 
such a thing will be possible. Already enough has been spent 
on it to have built from Bogota to the Magdalena a road as good 
as ordinary mountain-roads in the States. 

The last part of the ascent was an old road of stairs and quin- 
gos. It was a real scramble, and I arrived at the venta of Ba- 
rro Blanco heated and thirsty. There I met with a new bever- 
age — guaruz. It may be an abbreviation of agua de arroz — rice- 
water — and seems to be a chicha in which rice has been substi- 
tuted for maize. It was opaque, but white, instead of a dirty 
yellow like chicha. To imitate it, I would take a mixture of 
rice flour, brown sugar, or panela, and water, and let it begin to 
ferment till a slight taste of carbonic acid was perceptible. But 
the coolness made it the most exquisite beverage I ever tasted, 
and I took a second draught. I paid dear for it, for I was in 
absolute danger. I had on my thinnest clothes, was as hot as 
Tocaima, the barometer at 22 inches, the thermometer at 65°, 
and I with a mass of ice, as it seemed, in my stomach. I 
sprang to my saddle for my bayeton, but it was packed away, 
and I had nothing to shelter me. Then I started to see if I 
could gain heat by running. In so rare an atmosphere this was 
impossible, only I escaped dying. 

Z 



354 NEW GRANADA. 

After two or three miles I mounted, shivering still, and put 
on my encauchado as a defense from the cold, and thus endured 
it till night. The road lay for a long distance among the hills 
that skirt the plain and at their base. We crossed arms of the 
plain, and were again among hills. The road seemed to be 
avoiding water, that covered large parts of the Sabana. We at 
length entered on plain, bridge, causeway, and good macadam- 
ized road, all at the same time, and took a straight line for Cua- 
tro Esquinas. There, on a road once traversed before, we pro- 
ceeded till we reached the Hacienda of Quito. Here a cold, po- 
lite reception, chocolate (no dinner), and beds awaited us after 
our fatigues since breakfast. We breakfasted next morning at 
11, after a virtual fast of 26 hours or more, with an appetite 
sharpened by a ride past Culabrera, over Santuario and Puente 
Grande, and through Fontibon. 

The joy of Don Fulano's servants at my reappearance at the 
door was extravagant. One of them, the biggest, if not the 
dirtiest, tried to give me a hug, but she could not do it unless I 
stooped down on my mule, and, as I would not understand her 
movements, she contented herself with shaking hands. The 
fat Sefiora and her dry little Quiteno husband saluted me in the 
same foreign style. It was good to get back, after all. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

CEOSSING THE QUINDIO MOUNTAINS. 

The Party. — Early Start. — Late Dinner. — Sulphur Mine. — Hot Springs. — The 
Presidio. — An Accident. — Cold Night. — I love my Neighbor, and she love,? 
hers. — Twice-told Tale. — Boquia. — Balsa. — Ranchos. — Cartago. — Ball. — 
Prisoner set free. — The Drama in open Air. 

Peesto ! I am in Ibague again. Was last chapter a dream? 
Was there a ghost in it ? Yes, it must be : here I am, in my 
hammock, in a large sala in Ibague. Four gentlemen are spread 
out, two on tables and two on the floor. The crying of a babe 
has awakened me, and a woman's voice, from the room where it 
is, calls Antonia ! Antonia ! Antonia appears to be a black girl 
sleeping just outside of her mistress's door, and sleeping to some 
purpose, if, indeed, she be not dead. 



THE QUINDIO COEDILLEEA. 355 

Yes, it is even so. We are to start for the Quindio this 
morning, for, Sunday being market-day, all our purchases and 
those of the peons are made, and we are to have an early start. 
An early start means to rise at dawn, or earlier, and get off at 
ten. We did not do so well as this, for we were finally off just 
about eleven. 

The company consists of five gentlemen, two ladies, three 
children, four servant-maids, eleven peons, twenty-five horses 
and mules, and one dog. Our train was a long one — the ladies 
on side-saddles, the other girls astride, two little boys in a chair, 
one baby in a pine box, two vacant chairs for the ladies, one 
man with a box on his shoulders, two led horses, and an uncer- 
tain number of baggage mules. The gentlemen, of course, were 
mounted, except myself, who resolved to try the passage on foot. 
So we filed down the bluff to the banks of the Combeima, which 
we crossed on an ancient substantial bridge. Here, then, I stood 
at the very foot of the Quindio mountains, the middle range of 
the Andes. 

Quindio is not received as the name of the chain, but of this 
particular crossing-place. Chains of mountains here have no 
name. I have called the eastern chain the Bogota Range ; this 
will always be known as the Quindio, while the western has 
been called the Caldas Range, but the name is not received. It 
is a little curious that Humboldt mistook the name of this mount- 
ain, and always wrote it Quindiu. I am not aware that any 
Granadan ever wrote it so. 

I have reserved to this spot some remarks that perhaps I 
ought to have made earlier. The mountains about me are 
unique, so far as I ever have heard. They are remarkable as 
having at their feet a wide plain, sloping down toward the river 
from a great height above it, and not alluvial. This inclined 
plane is separated from the horizontal, alluvial plains of the riv- 
er by a chain of steep but not high hills, that I take to be sand- 
stone. 

But the strangest thing of all is in the structure of the mount- 
ain itself. As I stand here on the brink of the Combeima, at the 
very base of Tolima, you might imagine crags jutting out over 
my head, or precipices, from the base of which the road must 
gain the summit as it can. It is not so. Not a particle of rock 



356 NEW GRANADA. 

is visible. In all my wanderings in and around this chain, I 
have seen ledge but twice, if, indeed, more than once. Slopes 
there may be so steep that a fall from them would be fatal, and 
some of great height, almost perpendicular, but in them I see no 
rock at all. I can only regard it rationally as some rock en- 
tirely disintegrated, and perhaps I must call it granite, as where 
the road cuts through it I see no trace of stratification. 

Our order of march was generally the cargueros, the girls, 
the gentlemen and ladies, and lastly the baggage. My own 
place was at my option, as I could out-travel them all, and 
needed to take no other precaution than not to over-travel the 
baggage at night. I kept generally in advance. 

Most of the road at the eastern end was newly made, but on 
the same old route as 200 years ago. A detachment of the 
presidio were then engaged on it. And in all these days there 
was no diverging path, and not a house off the road, so there 
could be no possibility of losing my way. I had added to my 
thin walking-dress a ruana, rather to make it appear less nude 
than for comfort. When I became lonely, had questions to 
ask, or found something curious, I would wait till some of the 
party came up. The whole distance is called eighty-seven 
miles, but it would make a great difference whether you reckon- 
ed the slopes or only their bases. It would be more useful to 
estimate a journey by the height ascended and descended, as 
the horizontal distance matters little in comparison. 

We ascended incessantly for some hours to and past Palmilla. 
This is not a village, but only a house or two. Then came 
a long farewell to cultivation, a long descent, and then, toward 
night, some land as varying as an ordinary road among, but not 
over, mountains. We had intended to sleep at El Moral, but 
we started too late. 

A little before dark we reached Las Tapias. This consists 
of a house and kitchen, certainly not without occupants, but, in 
the confusion of peons and servants, I could not distinguish 
them. The baggage was behind. Only two mats, which came 
on a led horse, gave us a place to sit, without entering the dark, 
windowless cabin. We had nearly lost our hopes of our bag- 
gage when it arrived, and the girls set about getting dinner. 
The arrieros erected a tent over a huge pile of trunks and pack- 



NIGHT AT TAPIAS. 357 

ages. These tents are generally erected in the centre of the 
road, or, rather, the narrow road is in the centre of the tent. 
The tent-poles are sought on the spot. The cloth of the tent 
is the property of the gentleman, who is the chief of our party 
by all consideration, as he is husband of one of the ladies. The 
other is an unmarried sister of his wife. I call him Serlor. 

At 10 a mat had been spread in the house, a table-cloth 
spread on it, and a comfortless, ill-prepared dinner was season- 
ed with cheerfulness, kindness, and hunger into a real feast. I 
had, however, one ground of complaint that none but the serv- 
ants could remedy, and they would not. Besides paying my 
scot — escote — for the marketing, I had bought an extra supply 
of chocolate of my own ; but the guarichas would always make 
me wait till the last for my chocolate, and then add water to it, 
so that, though I imbibed more fluid, I received no more nour- 
ishment. I found all contention on this point useless. 

Supper over, an enormous almofrez was produced : out of it 
came a good bed, as large as a double bed ought to be, to- 
gether with a mattress, hammocks, blankets, night-shirts, and 
dresses, an infinity of articles. Three hammocks were hung ; 
a gentleman placed his bed under the three, at right angles with 
them, so that if any cord broke, he might be sure to share in 
the misfortune. The mattress was placed on a wide wooden 
bench made to sleep on, and the large bed occupied the place 
of our table on the floor. 

At 4 we rose, stowed all the bedding into the Trojan horse, 
that seemed always to have room for more, and, with the addi- 
tion of my bed, was no fuller than before. The combined in- 
dustry of four girls got us a breakfast about 7, and, after much 
delay, we started long before the mules were ready. We de- 
scended still more, to a stream, a tributary of the Coello, which, 
I think, was in sight on our left. Then we rose to El Moral. 
This is but a single house, though marked on the maps. 

From here was another uninterrupted ascent for some hours. 
In this time I had left all my company behind, and had passed 
Buenavista and an interesting spot called Azufral. Unfortu- 
nately, I had no notice of it till too late. It is an excavation 
for extracting sulphur. The altitude is given at 6470 feet, and 
the temperature is estimated at 61°, while in the excavations the 



358 NEW GRANADA. 

thermometer rises to 118°, according to Humboldt. No man 
can breathe there, for the air is 95 per cent, carbonic acid, and 
2 per cent, of the remainder is hydrosulphuric acid. Of course, 
such galleries can be carried to no depth. 

Near this spot is a contadero, or clear plot, the highest spot 
of the day's journey, that bears the name of Agua Caliente — 
hot water — from a hot spring near there. The spot may be 
said to be at the base of Tolima. I have not been able to hunt 
up the spring itself, which is, however, some little distance from 
the road. Had preceding travelers mentioned the spring and 
the Azufral, I should probably have seen both, for I was far in- 
deed ahead of my party. 

I employed part of this leisure in a way that makes me shud- 
der as I write. I found a little palm between 10 and 20 feet in 
height and nearly 3 inches in diameter. It is quite abundant 
about here. I wished to bring down one to examine the fruit. 
I cut upon it, at a convenient height, with my heavy machete, 
slanting downward, till the sharpened end of the trunk sudden- 
ly slid off the stump, and, impelled by the weight of its fruit, 
entered the ground like a crowbar. Its weight was very great, 
and it struck close to my foot, that was protected only by an 
alpargate ! Had the position of my foot been a little different, 
it would have been pinned to the ground. 

In these altitudes I was surprised with rain. I preferred 
rather to be wet than to turn back for my encauchado, so I 
walked on. 

Now I was descending. The road was wet, but stony, for 
the formation seems to be different here from other parts of the 
road. If, indeed, it be trachyte, I found little to indicate it. 
The descent was steep, and at length continuous. 

My breakfast had been very slight, and my dinner last night 
had not left a surplus in my animal treasury, and before reach- 
ing the summit my appetite became clamorous. Its appeals 
were useless. I had passed but one house, Buenavista, since 
passing El Moral, and I had nothing to expect short of Toche, 
the present locality of the presidio, which lay in a valley far be- 
neath me. 

The road presented a solitude unequaled by any thing I had 
ever seen on a traveled road, if, indeed, that can be called soli- 



THERMAL SPRINGS. 359 

tude which is filled with the voices of birds. Among the rest 
were turkeys, and a beautiful toucan of a brilliant green. The 
cry of one species of this bird is rendered by "Dios te ve /" — 
" God sees thee !" I picked up the cast skin of a snake on the 
way. 

At length my eyes were greeted by smoke that gracefully 
curled, but not around green elms. I hastened down the steep 
hills, slippery with the rain, and reached a roaring river (the Co- 
ello) at the bottom, where was a fire, but neither house nor hu- 
man being. The road ran up the left bank of the river till it 
came to a place where a land-slide had carried it into the river. 
The remedy for this was new, beautiful, singular, and original. 
A Yankee would have built a water-wall to confine the river to 
its place, and taken earth from the steep hill to fill in. To fa- 
vor this plan, the river is full of boulders here of all sizes, while 
elsewhere no rock is to be had. Instead of this, the engineer 
made a zigzag up a hill that we would regard as all but imprac- 
ticable. This road ascended half or two thirds the height of 
West Hoboken Hill, and then, without a yard of level ground, 
it descended again to the level of the river. It was broad and 
beautifully cut, as in a pleasure-ground, but, unfortunately, will 
soon be destroyed by the weather. And this is the most im- 
portant change in the site of the road that has been made, per- 
haps, for two centuries ! 

Just as I began to climb the hill, I met a beggar with a knife 
in his belt. To enforce his claim, he informed me that he was 
a presidario. Had he assured me that he had murdered his 
mother I could have given him nothing — my money was behind. 
At the very foot of this descent, two rods from the road and ten 
feet from the river, is a small mound occupied by a hot spring. 
Any traveler will readily find it by this description. It appear- 
ed to be throwing up an enormous quantity of water, which, had 
I been in a hurry, I should describe as passing off by a subter- 
ranean channel. In fact, I believe it threw out no more water 
than could have been dipped out with a coffee-cup, but with it 
an immense quantity of carbonic acid gas, and that with much 
force. The spring was 8. feet long, 3£ wide, and 6 feet deep. 
I got in, and judged its specific gravity rather greater than sea- 
water, but I may have been deceived by the upward tendency 



360 NEW GEANADA. 

of the gas discharged beneath me. The temperature was 90°. 
The mound was evidently oxide of iron, that had been thrown 
off by the spring, as is also some salt of lime, probably carbon- 
ate, that incrusts twigs around there. The gas that came off 
seemed almost entirely carbonic acid, but traces of sulphur were 
noticeable. The gas issued evidently from that end of the ba- 
sin nearest the river, and it bore the body of the bather percep- 
tibly toward the other end. 

On the right hand (north) of the road, 20 or 30 rods up 
stream, was a smaller spring, 6 inches in diameter and 6 feet 
deep. Little gas escaped. Less exposed to the air, its temper- 
ature should be higher. I made it 91°. That at Agua Cali- 
ente is said to be far greater. 

I had still nearly a mile to walk up the river over a very 
wet plain, which, but for the drains, would deserve the name 
of swamp. In the ditches here I saw the first and only con- 
ferva I have seen in the country. Near the upper end I saw a 
field fenced in, which, however, appeared not yet to be ready 
for cultivation. Then I crossed the Coello on a covered bridge 
just above the mouth of the Tochecito. In the fork of the two 
rivers is a dry plain, covered thickly with large boulders, so as 
to be difficult to ride over. Here stands Toche. 

I arrived about 12, and my first idea was to supply the de- 
ficiencies of my breakfast. I called for bread, butter, chocolate, 
fruit, guarapo, and eggs, but could only obtain the latter, and 
at the rate of eight for a dime. I ordered four eggs boiled, and, 
by the time they were done, they had found two bits of dry 
bread. A board in a corner served for a table, the handle of 
a spoon for a spoon, a chair turned down for a seat. While 
eating, they assured me that the officers here used panela and 
water for chocolate, and liked it. They could furnish me the 
same, and I tried it. 

Before 2 our party began to come in, but all the beasts 
were not in till about 3. It was decided that we could not go 
on to Gallego ; this gave us a dinner by day, and afforded me 
an opportunity to observe the community in which we were 
to spend the night. Toche, I think, was one house before the 
presidio was stationed here. That has been enlarged, two oth- 
ers put up, and a dozen little huts. The huts are for men on 



PEESIDIO. 361 

parole. They are called francos, and are not, like the guarda- 
dos, kept all the time within shot. The franco that I met to^ 
day was a messenger that had been dispatched to Ibague. It 
is unwise for them to try to run away, but they often do. 

At night the presidarios were marched down the zigzag that 
we have to climb to-morrow. They were drawn up in a line, 
the roll called, and their rations given them. These are meal, or 
maize, or rice, and salt, and an immensity of panela, a quarter of 
a pound per diem. Most of the prisoners are on parole, and sleep 
in the huts ; the others are thrust into one of the houses, and 
kept under guard. There are twenty-five soldiers, more or less. 
One of them marched a prisoner up to us who wished to beg. 
He had the additional merit of a large chain from his waist to 
his ankle, showing him to be one of the worst of the presidio. 
Even this did not avail him : we left him to the mercy of the 
President, whose only pardons seem to have been of prisoners 
who had risked their lives in the service of cholera hospitals on 
the Isthmus. 

Altogether, the prisoners are well treated here, and, to a poor 
man, it is worse to wait his trial a week in Bogota or Ibague 
than to serve a month here; and to any man, a week here is 
better than to wait his trial a single night in the prison (stocks) 
of Pandi. 

We were here the guests of the warden, to whom all the gen- 
tlemen of the party were personally known except myself. He 
gave up to us his entire apartment, quartering himself for the 
night abroad. 

In arrangements for the night, I saw a specimen of that dis- 
regard of the comfort of others that even personal friends are 
said to be liable to show in traveling. The instance was slight 
— the premature seizing on a sleeping-place by the youngest 
LL.D. It only merits mention from the extreme rarity of the 
occurrence. For myself, I had an excellent night's rest in my 
hammock in the surgeon's room. 

I had looked up from Toche to the road above with amaze- 
ment, and an incredulity that would not believe my eyes. It 
appeared rather to be a work of fortification than a road. Zig- 
zags, as steep as an armed soldier could ascend without climb- 
ing, seemed to run to points that nearly overhung the place 



362 



NEW GRANADA. 



where we stood. The lines and turns were as sharp as if 
carved in stone or built of brick. But no one could think it 
a road, for it aimed evidently at the highest peaks, and not at 
any pass that a road should seek. 

But it was a road, and 
our road. Up we went, 
till, in three or four miles, 
I had risen more than in 
any other road of the same 
length in my life. And 
up there a new wonder 
met my incredulous eyes 
— two flat stones, with 
inscriptions, which show 
that this road is more 
than two hundred years 
old. They were copied 
by Senor Raphael Pom- 
bo, who kindly executed 
for me the annexed draw- 
ings. I read the first, 
"Por aqui paszo (for 
paso) Francisco de Pena- 
randa, a 24 de Agosto, 
1641." — Here passed 
Francisco de Penaranda, 24th August, 1641. The second is 
broken, and I can not satisfy myself of the surname ; neither 
can I learn what member of the ancient and noble family of Pe- 
naranda was here at that day. 

Now all this outrageous ascent is unnecessary. Our day's 
journey follows up the- Tochecito. We keep mostly far above 
it, but probably only from Spanish or Indian aversion to roads 
on side-hill. And yet all quingo road is effectively side-hill 
road, for on one side is bank, and on the other steep descent. 

I stopped to see some presidarios work, and to talk with the 
officer of the guard, when a new sight met my eyes : for the 
first time I saw one human being bearing another as a beast 
of burden. We were at the end of the labors of the presidio, 
and in advance were bad portions of road that the two ladies 




INSCRIPTIONS ON STONES .NEAR TOCHE- 



364 



NEW GRANADA. 




SILLEROS. 365 

were thus to pass. Tlie accompanying sketch represents rath- 
er scenery of the next day in the first great descent toward the 
valley of the Cauca, but it here serves to illustrate what I have 
now to describe. 

The sillero is not an extremely athletic man. He is nude 
from the waist up, and his pantaloons are rolled up at the bot- 
tom as far as possible, especially in muddy weather. A rude 
chair (silla) of guadua, with a piece of white cotton cloth put 
over to keep off such rain and sun as it may, is all the appara- 
tus. This is secured to the sillero's body by two belts cross- 
ing over the chest, and another passing over the forehead. The 
rider must keep absolutely still. If the sillero slip or stumble, 
any motion, however slight, of the rider, will insure a fall. It is, 
therefore, much easier to ride asleep than awake, and far safer. 
At the time I saw them first, the way was so terribly steep that 
I could not but think that a Northern lady would walk to rest 
her horse. There is sometimes the same feeling here. A lady 
told me that she refused to submit to it at first, but her condi- 
tion forbade all idea of an alternative, and when compelled to 
yield, she did so with many tears. Colonel Hamilton, a British 
minister, arrived in Ibague barefoot, with his feet bleeding, ac- 
companied by two silleros, whom he paid liberally, but never 
used. Our two ladies took it more naturally. La Seiiora was 
already asleep, and Senorita, her sister, was reading. 

A prodigious descent and a slight rise brought us to Gallego. 
We had hoped to pass the previous night there, but when I saw 
the spot I was glad we did not. It was an open tambo, a mere 
roof set on posts, without a particle of lateral shelter, or one el- 
ement of comfort. Gloomy enough was the scene, for it was an 
immense wilderness of the wax-palm (Ceroxylon andicola). The 
tall and slender stems (represented as far too low in Humboldt's 
JYbva Genera) were rising thick in every direction. The cylin- 
drical trunks were from 12 to 15 inches in diameter, as straight 
as the shaft of a column, and terminated at the summit, say 50 
feet high, by a tuft of huge leaves. The trunk, which, like all 
palms, is destitute of bark, is coated with a considerable film of 
wax, or, rather, it is believed, resin. It might be made a profit- 
able business to collect and sell this, as much of the wax used 
in the churches is imported, and sells here at an extravagant 
price, nearly $3 per pound, when in the form of candles. 



366 NE W GRANADA. 

In nine months from the time we were seated there, eating 
dulce and drinking water, the scene was much changed. The 
presidio had been there, and left the tambo inclosed with walls, 
and had added two little huts and a shed. A man was still liv- 
ing in one of the huts when, as a slow, bitterly cold rain made 
the dismal scene tenfold more dismal, at nightfall, wounded and 
bleeding, I contrived to get off my horse at the tambo. My last 
meal had been before starting, on the morning of the day before, 
though chocolate and a little bread had sufficed to keep me alive. 
Of even this support I was partly deprived, for that morning I 
had incautiously bitten into a berry so intensely nauseous as to 
cause me to vomit up the little I had swallowed an hour before. 
I had thought it to be Passiflorate, but it proved to be Cucurbi- 
tate. 

I was coming from the west, and, just before reaching the 
highest point of the Quindio, a shower came on. I mounted 
chiefly to keep my saddle dry. Both hands were filled with 
plants, that I had gathered even as I rode along in the rain, and 
over all was my encauchado, which is quite an impediment in 
an emergency. I was mounted on a rather tall and awkward 
horse, and the road was of the, steepest. The rain had just 
ceased, and we were on the very last ascent. In ten minutes 
we were to leave the valley of the Cauca, when my horse fell. 
It was not necessary for me to dismount, but he would rise 
more easily. I attempted to land outside the path in a tuft of 
bushes, but, when too late, saw that I was stepping off a steep 
bank into the top of a thicket of shrubs. 

I caught at the saddle. My horse was rising. I pulled him 
over. For an instant I saw the huge creature, whose feet were 
uppermost, directly above me. How I was not crushed under 
him I never shall know. To my surprise, I saw the horse roll 
down below me. He found himself in the road again where he 
had been a minute before, for he had fallen from one quingo to 
the next. I looked : my saddle was unbroken, my bag of oran- 
ges safe, the package of plants that I carried undamaged. Only 
the last gathered were crushed, and them I abandoned. I climbed 
up again, and then found a wound on my leg. I dared not 
mount, lest I should faint from pain. I abandoned my encau- 
chado and horse to a servant, and walked in agony for half an 



AN ACCIDENT. 3(57 

hour. This was about noon, and now at night I stood in the 
rain at the tambo of Gallego. There is no level spot here large 
enough to hold two huts. The one in which I spent the night 
was about fifteen feet higher than the tambo, and distant about 
twenty feet horizontally. The steep paths were full of slippery 
mud, so that it was scarce possible to walk without falling. 

Fortunately, the man that lived in this solitude had killed a 
black bear, and sold us some of the meat. The servants had 
nothing to spoil it with, and, in spite of the pain and the blood 
still trickling down my leg, I made a delicious dinner about 8. 
I then, with great difficulty, got some water to wash the wound, 
tied a silk handkerchief on it, put my dearly-earned plants in 
paper, slung my hammock, and by 10 I was asleep. Eight- 
and-forty hours after the accident I was in Ibague\ had taken 
off the handkerchief, procured some warm water, and was wash- 
ing the bits of gravel out of the festering wound. Had I un- 
fortunately broken a thigh, I could not have reached assistance, 
either by advancing or receding, in less than a week. 

But this was all in the future, while we sat on the ground an 
hour eating marmalade and drinking the water, so deliriously 
cool then and so chilly thereafter. At another place, a conta- 
dero, I saw a monument like a tomb-stone, that must have been 
brought there at immense cost, on which I could read but one 
word, the revered name Cdldas. It turns out to be erected in 
honor of a mass celebrated there by Bishop somebody some 
centuries since, as I am informed by a Sefior Caldas, whose 
name suggested to me the lamented Granadan sage. He was 
waiting here to rest, and inscribed his name for want of some- 
thing better to do. 

Farther on we passed an abundance of fine drinking-places, 
from which the water flowed into the Tochecito, on our left ; then 
came a great descent to the river. All the way down grows a 
cucurbitate vine with an elastic fruit. At length we are down 
to the bottom, and I feel sure that up to this point a road from 
Toche could have been built with less distance, no descent, no 
blasting % and level enough for carriages. Probably it would cost 
less than government will spend on the road during this visit 
of the presidio. We cross to the right bank of the Tochecito, 
here a small mill-stream, and commence our grand ascent. I 



368 NEW GRANADA. 

relieved the tedium of the way by translating Longfellow's Ex- 
celsior into Spanish, and getting explained to me the difference 
between la bandera — the banner — and lavandera — a washer- 
woman — by a gentleman who knows no difference between the 
sound of b and v. He made me comprehend by the time he 
got well out of breath. I am afraid I hardly acted fairly. 

Nearly at the top was the tambo of Yerba Buena, so called 
from an abundance of peppermint — Mentha piperita — that grows 
there and in many other places. We halted early at Volcan- 
cito, a tambo inclosed by upright poles, then the best in the 
whole mountain. The roof let in some light, the walls admit- 
ted the wind freely, and the floor was of loose dirt. It was 
early, and I gloried in Volcancito, gathering Fuchsias of different 
species, Begonias, and other tropical plants, together with an 
Epilobium, that reminded me of home. 

I had a different idea of the climate of Volcancito in the morn- 
ing. About sunset the cold began to sting my feet, and I had 
to change my alpargatas for stockings and slippers — my only 
alternative, for we open no trunks this week. In washing my 
feet I found water too cold for me, for the first time in South 
America. I immediately began to dress for bed, putting on first 
flannels of the thickest description, then a night-shirt, a woolen 
hunting-shirt, and over all a thick hunting-coat. I risked my 
nether half, in which the blood had been circulating well since 
leaving Ibague, in a pair of flannel drawers and corduroy pan- 
taloons. 

These were my extraordinary preparations. I began my or- 
dinary ones soon after dinner. I had studied in Ibague, where 
they have cold nights, the art of sleeping warm in a hammock, 
and, as it is not understood even here, I will communicate it. I 
took my two thick blankets by one end, holding them up to- 
gether, and lowered them to a mat on the floor. Then I laid them 
across the foot of the hammock, and, with assistance (for it was 
very high), threw myself into it. Next I drew the blankets out 
of their folds and over me by the end I held before. Next I 
brought the edges of the blankets within the hammock. So far 
every body knows, but as yet I have nothing beneath me but a 
thickness of cotton ; my rear must be better defended. Here 
comes my secret. I draw myself up from the centre of the ham- 



NIGHT AT VOLCANCITO. 369 

mock, where I am to sleep, toward the head. Then I put the 
edges of the blanket beneath me, so that they pass each other, 
beginning at the feet and ending at the shoulders, where the 
process is very difficult, but is aided by gradually sliding down 
the hammock to the point of equilibrium. Now only remains 
the delicate task of placing myself diagonally in the hammock, 
so that the head and feet are less elevated. All these opera- 
tions, be it remembered, are to be performed as on a slack-rope. 

All were suffering with the cold. It was a time for Mark 
Tapley to be jolly in. I called on Senor for a tale, and he com- 
plied. He told one which gave me a new idea of a language in 
which there are no indecent words, or, if there be, it is past any 
conjecture what they would represent. Fortunately for me, the 
character of all the parties present was beyond suspicion, so I 
was only surprised, not alarmed, at a tale that in England would 
date back to the days of Charles II. 

But there is another puzzle about that tale, either ethnological 
or psychological. It must be that I have heard a variation of 
it before, and that in English, and before I was ten years old. 
How shall I ascertain ? Can any member of the Percy Society 
inform me if there is a tale of past centuries about two people 
spending a night in a tree, and throwing down a table, or a door 
that would serve for one, on the heads of some robbers that 
were dividing their booty below ? If so, childish tales have an 
blder date and a wider range than I could have thought possi- 
ble, and this foolish one must be known all over Western Eu- 
rope and both Americas. 

Unfortunately, I had succeeded too well with my hammock. 
A generous glow at length pervaded my frame, and my heart 
began to expand, and inquire into the state of those around me. 
Senorita was very cold, and had no prospect of sleeping all night. 
I asked myself, "Can I spare my thinnest blanket?" My ex- 
panded heart answered, "For a lady, an amiable young lady 
whom I esteem, and who is suffering with cold more intense than 
ever she has known, I can." But I found that, like the last feath- 
er that broke the camel's back, this blanket was necessary to 
break the power of the cold. I passed a sleepless night. I tried 
a new manoeuvre ; I put myself on my right side, on the right 
edge of the hammock, bringing the rest over me for a cover, 

Aa 



370 NEW GRANADA. 

Thus I resembled a huge follicle, or, zoologically speaking, a bi- 
valve, holding my shell shut with my hands, a knee, and my 
head, which rested on the inflexed edge of my upper valve. This 
failed, and, when too late to sleep, I added my blanket and ham- 
mock to the covering of one of the cold would-be sleepers on the 
floor, and crawled in by his side to thaw. 

In the morning I found Senorita's shawl on the bed of the 
young LL.D., that lay at the foot of hers. She too had a heart, 
and, in a moment when her left hand knew not what her right 
hand did, she had lent it before she received my blanket. A 
hearty laugh followed this discovery, and to this day the men- 
tion of Volcancito seems to make a peculiar impression on the 
young lady. 

Short and unsatisfactory was the breakfast we made before 
leaving Volcancito. We were near the edge of the Paramo, and 
even here the ground is sometimes covered with snow for near- 
ly a week at once. A peculiar visitation sometimes overtakes 
the traveler at these altitudes. Without suffering intensely with 
the cold, he suddenly loses his strength, then his life. This is 
emparamarse, an occurrence that had nearly proved fatal to one 
of my friends, and which I have had occasion once or twice to 
guard against. But now we had nothing to fear, and I even re- 
sumed my scant walking-dress, and had a delightful day. We 
crossed an abundance of cool streams, all flowing to our left. 
On the banks of one of them I found a magnificent Equisetum, 
5 or 6 feet high. I lost it by trusting to the assurance that 
others as large could be found in the plains of the Cauca, and 
from the great difficulty of saving specimens on this solitary 
road. We reached in an hour or two the dividing ridge, and 
kept it for some time. 

Here the road became bad as we descended, though nothing in 
comparison to those frightful semi-subterranean ditches through 
which Cochran rode and the fat Hamilton walked for long dis- 
tances, without elevating the head up to the level of the ground. 
These trenches (callejones) sometimes lay along our road like 
buffalo-traps (mule-traps), and sometimes opened upon it like 
the mouth of a deserted mine. Had either of these travelers 
been given to exaggeration, they would not have attempted it in 
describing these callejones. 



BOQUfA. 371 

This was the scene of my catastrophe on a later trip. Here 
too is laid the scene of a tale, that well may be true, of a Spanish 
official who, having a right to compel the service of unpaid sil- 
leros, rode one with a pair of those horrid mule spurs. The 
poor Indian, goaded past endurance, threw his brute of a rider 
down a steep, where he was killed by the fall, and then fled to 
the woods and never returned. 

The ladies, who had been in their chairs only a little in the 
latter part of the steep ascent from Toche, now took them for a 
good part of the day. Senora slept, Senorita read, and the sillero 
went on as if his chair was empty. None seemed to feel that 
there were any necks at stake. 

At 2 we reached Barcinal, the first house since leaving 
Toche, the sixth in seventy-two hours. Here was a family of 
Antioquenos, who supplied us with masamorra, made of cracked 
maize, boiled and eaten with milk. This is a favorite dish in 
that secluded province. I like the Antioquenos and the Antio- 
quenas, and I like their caps, but I think I should not like the 
too frequent recurrence of masamorra. 

Between Barcinal and Toche there is no good place to pass 
the night, and yet they are more than a day's journey apart. 
The Lest remedy is a better road, and one could be made that 
would bring one through even in bad weather. Had we proceed- 
ed to Gallego the second night, we might have reached Barcinal 
on the following, and saved the martyrdom of Volcancito. 

A steep, rough road led from Barcinal down to Boquia, on 
the banks of the Quindio. Boquia is the head of a district in 
the province of Cauca. It has some tolerable houses, a good 
posada, the beginnings of a church, a wheat-mill that I saw in 
actual operation, and a covered bridge over a branch of the Quin- 
dio. Provisions might sometimes be bought here. 

After fording the Quindio, quite a large mill-stream, nearly 
two feet deep, we found a broad and beautiful ascent, followed 
by another that put the ladies in their chairs, and brought us to 
El Roble (The Oak). We stopped here early, and just in sea- 
son to avoid a brisk shower, which surprised the arrieros before 
their tent was completed. El Eoble is not so high as Volcan- 
cito. We passed the night more like Christians, eating at a 
table, sleeping in a house, and Senorita even had a bed-room 



372 NEW GEANADA. 

to herself nominally, but she could not be secure from intru- 
sion. 

We left El Roble on Friday morning. A gentle descent of 
about three miles brought us to another Antioqueiio family, at 
Portachuela, a pleasant place to stop. Here I found out what 
arrepas are, and discover that I have avoided them in New 
England under the name of Johnny-cake, and in Illinois as hoe- 
cake, pone, and corn-dodgers. 

We stopped again at a contadero, called Lagunetas, and dis- 
patched peons to bring us drink. I suppose that, as the name 
implies, they found it in "mud-holes," or "little ponds." In 
going west, it is well to drink here, or to carry on water from 
Portachuela. 

From here on I found the roads slippery with rain, and almo- 
hadillado, i. e., full of "mule-ladders," between the rounds of 
which the animal puts his feet into a deep mud-hole. I put my 
feet there too by misfortune, and one time my knee, to the no 
small detriment of my personal appearance. I soon lost sight 
of my company. I found no water to drink all day, but found a 
drink of milk on the way. Here I was overtaken by a man go- 
ing from Boquia to Cartago in a day and a half; for us it is 
more than two days, if not three. He had a corner of his ruana 
pinned up into a pocket, from which projected the head of a live 
chicken, a present to a lady in Cartago. 

About 2 I arrived at La Balsa (The Raft). I had promised 
myself a good swim in the river, but found there was no river \ 
here. I am totally at a loss for the origin of the name. I scarce- \ 
ly found water enough to wash the mud off my feet. Here I 
waited an hour or two for the company, and when they arrived 
it was decided to go no further. 

La Balsa is the first place that deserves a name since leav- 
ing Ibague. The population of the district is stated at 199, and 
that of Boquia 198, but both are scattered over more than 100 
square miles each. I know of no reason for a town here, but it 
is very convenient to us. I now made a grand discovery, and 
that was that I liked plantains cooked. So rarely are they cook- 
ed really ripe, that I knew not the taste of a ripe one. Here is 
the first place that I have seen them abundant. They take 
them to Cartago to sell. A large raceme of green ones was 
given to one of the led horses for his dinner. 



LA BALSA. 373 

Here we dined on the floor, and, in consequence of a rain com- 
ing on just after we stopped, I got no plants. We made the 
acquaintance, more lasting than profitable, with the zancudo, 
which I found, on examination, is no more nor less than the 
musquito. In all my trip from Honda here I do not know 
that I have seen any, and here they were so few that I only 
heard one or two. 

Saturday morning found me a little anxious about the end of 
Our journey, especially as it had begun to rain. I put on my 
encauchado, and, though I could have had a horse the whole 
day, kept my feet. Senora's sillero could not do as much ; he 
spilled his precious charge four times in the morning. I hap- 
pened to be talking with her at the time of the first fall, and 
continued with her till she again took the saddle. 

One comical picture might have been witnessed had there 
only been a spectator to laugh. The chair was broken, and must 
be mended. He stood his burden upon a huge log, three feet 
in diameter. It must be sheltered, and the only possible shel- 
ter was one end of my encauchado, but it served well its pur- 
pose. 

The Senorita, more fortunate, had not a fall in crossing the 
mountain. I saw one place where the foot of her sillero had 
slipped a yard ; but she is less timorous than her sister, and 
seems to have kept from starting. Two silleros fell with the 
Senora. 

At Piedra de Moler, which signifies either grindstone or mill- 
stone, is a ferry across the La Vieja, into which the Quindio 
empties some way above. Here we paid a peaje or tax of 80 
cents each to the province of Cauca. It can not be called 
toll, for it is not expended on the highways. With the excep- 
tion of a little piece of territory that lies west of the Cauca, 
where a road that runs up and down the river may belong to 
the province, all the road in the province is national, but it is 
very rare for either nation or province to spend any thing on it. 
I recollect in the space of nine months only the building of a 
single foot-bridge, and am sure I have seen no other labor or 
money expended on the highway. 

This time we did not allow the ferry to delay us much. We 
stopped to see the beasts swim across — an interesting sight — 



374 NEW GKANADA. 

went to the ferryman's house to eat some eggs and roasted plan- 
tains, and came on, leaving our baggage to follow in two de- 
tachments. 

The rain had ceased, but threatened, so that I thought pru- 
dent to retain my defenses. An immense hill only remained to 
ascend and descend, for Cartago is on the bank of the river we 
passed. 

Ascending the hill, I saw the Bihai (Heliconia Bihai), a Can- 
nate herb, that supplied leaves for shelter to travelers before tam- 
bos were built. The leaves are of that characteristic Scitamin- 
ate form shown in our gardens by the Indian-shot (Canna), and 
in pictures by those of the plantain and banana. They are 
from one to two feet long, whitish beneath, and are hung by a 
notch in the petiole to horizontal strings passing over the poles 
that make the roof of a rancho. Each peon and carguero was 
bound to carry his quota of these from this place going east- 
ward, and the traveler might have to sleep nearly a fortnight 
under a thatch thus transported. 

From the top we had the first good view of the Valley of 
the Cauca. It was not level, but rolling, as they say at the 
West. Its vivid green contrasted beautifully with the dry 
plains of Ibague and Espinal. I can scarcely believe that there 
can be a more beautiful scene than that where the plain breaks 
in upon the view. Around you still is the rugged scenery of 
the mountain, while in the blue distance are the Caldas mount- 
ains, which I fear I shall never cross. It would be more beau- 
tiful still were the Cauca visible ; but, as its right bank is lined 
with uninterrupted swamp and forest, it is not to be seen but by 
penetrating to it. We had obtained a single glimpse of the 
valley the day before, not long after leaving Lagunetas, but it 
was only through a narrow opening of the trees. 

Soon after coming in full sight of the plain the duties of the 
silleros ceased. At the first pool below, they put themselves in 
their best trim to make their appearance in Cartago. Camisas 
were drawn forth from some safe storage, and hats and ruanas, 
added to the simple costume of the mountains, made them into 
ordinary peasants. 

At length we reached the plain, but when we made the change 
from primitive formation to the alluvial I can not tell. I doubt 



ARRIVAL AT CARTAGO. 375 

even if the line is capable of being determined, so strongly do the 
soils of the two resemble each other. 

The expense of the trip I can not tell exactly. The cost of 
beasts was 52 dimes each, including peon service ; the subsist- 
ence may have been half that sum* but we kept no separate ac- 
counts. Our expenses will be found rather below the average 
cost of crossing the Quindio, unless the losses from petty thefts 
are to be reckoned in. My chief loss was a hatchet having two 
chisels deposited in a cavity of the handle, a towel (not that 
crash one), and, of course, as much rope as they could easily lay 
their hands on. 

We arrived in good season on Saturday, but our baggage did 
not get in till too late for mass the next day. Cartago is a town 
of about the size of Ibague, but much lower and warmer. But 
still I suffered little with the heat here or with the cold there. 
For a man who is under the necessity of corporal labor in the 
sun, the climate of Ibague is much to be preferred to that of 
this part of the Valley of the Cauca. My lowest altitude in the 
valley has been 2880 feet, and the highest temperature in the 
shade was 85°, at La Paila, 11th June, 1853, at 4 P.M. Even 
this is tolerable. The hottest I have seen in the sun was 127°. 
This I have seen exceeded in New York city. For the rest, 
my observations in the valley may be seen in the Appendix. 

Cartago has much more of tile and less of thatch than Ibague. 
The place is old, but not entirely finished, for I saw one house 
of tapias still going up. They put together a frame, with sides 
of strong plank, shovel in earth, and beat it down. Bars that 
hold the frame together leave holes through the wall, but these 
can be stopped. The work is rather slow, but as no frost ever 
attacks these walls, they are as good as brick, and in an earth- 
quake even better. By whitewashing occasionally, they are as 
beautiful at a distance as marble, and much cheaper. 

I searched the churches for any thing of note, and found only 
a Saint George — San Jorje (pronounced hoar-hay) — mounted 
over one of the altars, with his dragon beneath his horse's feet, 
of course. This saint is rather rare in this country. 

Cartago stands on the La Yieja, but opposite the town is a 
large grassy island, with a small and safe arm on this side, and 
a stream beyond that would be navigable for a small steam- 



376 NEW GRANADA. 

boat. It is two or three miles from the banks of the Cauca, 
as, indeed, are all the towns. This little branch is a favorite 
bathing-place, and Sunday is a favorite day, so I found the lit- 
tle stream swarming with all ages, both sexes, and a variety of 
costumes and colors. The stream was now so high that a girl 
of twelve or fourteen had just been rescued from drowning, they 
said. I saw her adjusting her hair very composedly, and the 
danger, if it had been real, seemed to have made no impression. 

On a subsequent day I visited the jail. It is like any other 
house. One chap was making pictures, or paintings, he called 
them, of such a desperate character that I think he ought not 
to be turned loose without formally forswearing the brush — I 
will not say pencil. Another held undisturbed possession of 
the front sala and the adjoining bed-rooms. His windows 
opened out on pleasant balconies, in view of the plaza mayor. 
One of his frequent visitors proposed to the alcaide to put a lad- 
der up to one of the balconies, and save himself the trouble of 
letting him in and out. 

The girls' school seemed to be in a remarkably fine condition. 
The patio was full of flowers, better cultivated than any where 
else probably in the whole province. The children seemed 
more lively and cheerful than ordinary ; the result of zeal, I 
think, in the teacher, who seemed more than usually qualified 
for the task. Give her books, and her pupils would become 
ladies. I went to looking over their reading-books, and found one 
reading-lesson of so singular a nature that I could not resist 
my desire to possess it, so I went home and tore in two a num- 
ber of El Dia, a Jesuit newspaper. I selected a half which 
had a long string of verses, beginning, " I, the President, am an 
Ass, and my master, Faction, rides me." This I gave her for a 
reading-lesson in exchange for hers, which was a small election- 
eering hand-bill, containing all the names of the candidates of 
both parties, with a foot-note to each, praising those of one 
party, and bringing scandalous charges against the others. A 
picture of the Goddess of Silence in the room is the work of 
Senor Santibanas, one of the best native artists now extant : 
small praise, I allow. 

I called at his studio, and saw there some clam-shells, a thing 
so rare that I have known no others in all New Granada. He 



BALLS AND PLAYS. 377 

directed me to a pond where I found two species alive. The 
pond had no outlet, and the bottom is quite muddy, but it is 
still resorted to for bathing by some who do not like the brisk, 
clear water of the river. One of these species* is said to have 
been also picked up on the pebbly banks of the Paila River, 30 
miles south of here. I can not now think it lived there. 

I attended in Cartago the best ball that I saw in all the coun- 
try. I can not deny that it was dull, but the participants ap- 
peared quite like gentlemen and ladies. Still, there was a re- 
straint and stiffness in the affair that we do not see in our best 
society at the North, and which I should not expect in a South- 
ern race. One event of the evening struck me too strongly to 
be easily forgotten. A young gentleman entered the room about 
8, radiant with smiles of satisfaction : he was cordially received, 
and entered into the dancing with great spirit. I found that he 
had lain all the week in jail for debt. It was only since dark 
that he had gained his liberty, and he did not seem at all mor- 
tified at the occurrence. 

Imprisonment is abolished for debts contracted since a certain 
date, but the old laws were even too severe. No amount of se- 
curity would suffice to liberate the debtor against the will of the 
creditor — nothing but the money. The creditor is to allow the 
prisoner a real a day for subsistence. 

They had just had a grand time in Cartago before my arrival. 
The Plaza had been fenced in for bulls. The favorite game of 
Horned monkey (Cachimona), in which dice are used and coins 
change owners, had disappointed some and elated others. But 
the only thing of interest that I lost was some open air plays on 
a stage of guaduas, that was still standing in a corner of a pla- 
zuela, in an angle made by a church and the sacristia. I must 
content myself with the account of this from an article in the 
"Neo Granadino" by an eye-witness, who had left Cartago just 
as I arrived : 

" It was announced as something extra that there would be 
two plays acted. But let no one imagine (although it might be 
reasonably expected) that they were to be minor pieces, farces 

* Since writing the above, I have learned that by Lea this shell of ambiguous 
habitat has been named Anodonta Holtonis. The other was Mycetopus sili- 
quoides. 



378 NEW GRANADA. 

of one act, or comedies adapted to the taste of the multitude, for 
whom the dramatic compliment was designed. They had the 
knack to hit upon two grand dramatic spectacles, in which all 
the performers, even to the prompter, commit suicide. They 
abounded in places, histories, passions, customs, catastrophes, 
courts, cardinals, princes, and executioners, whose names the 
amateur performers could not pronounce. And they were to be 
acted on a scaffold erected in a corner of a public square, for the 
benefit of all those who could afford the price of standing bare- 
headed half a night in the open air. 

" After a long delay, and clamorous calls for the rising of the 
modest cloth that played the part of curtain, it rose. Then 
rose, too, the laugh of the spectators, who protested and resist- 
ed accepting as Lord Chambeland, Duque de Norfold, and Sir 
Grammer, the three worthy citizens who topsyturvically (al- 
revesadamente) pronounced these names, and applied them to 
each other. These English noblemen were dressed in the mas- 
querade of private theatricals. 

" But the uproar reached its height when Henry VIII.* ap- 
peared. On his head was a crown, that he had to hold with one 
hand lest it should fall when he moved. His dress, modern in 
the extreme, showed that the capricious monarch was very pro- 
phetic in the matter of fashions. He spoke, addressing himself 
rather to the masses than to his interlocutor. He told of Ed- 
ward, of Malcolm, of William the Conqueror, of William Rufus, 
of Edgar, of his successor David, father of Steven — of the Em- 
press Matilda, of Catharine Howard, and of other names and 
other things, all well known, of course, both in the theatres of 
Paris and on the ' boards' (guaduas) of Cartago. 

"Now some began to grow desperate, drowning the voice of the 
actors, and exciting obstreperous laughter in the audience. In 
one of the most pathetic passages they shifted a scene, or, rather, 
the cloth that served for one, and many cried out at once that 
the door is fawling — que se quee la puerta. A child began to 
cry, and from more than one voice was heard the rude order to 
give that baby the teat — (ubre, not jpecho). Then stones began 

* It is easy to foresee that the Reformation was not to be highly exalted in 
this drama ; but the Romish Church are not to blame for making the most they 
can out of old Bluebeard. 



A WORK OF FICTION. 379 

to fly. Dr. Galindo was hit near us, and we retired well pleased, 
you may guess, with the atraso* of that sovereign mob, who ob- 
served so much decorum and quiet in the presence of all the au- 
thorities, civil and military, who (I had forgotten to state it) 
were present." 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

A CAUCAN FAMILY. 



Scheme for Revealing and Concealing. — Introduction to the Family. — House in 
Cartago. — Bad Ear-ache and Ball. — How to go to Bed. — Water-hoys. — Fleas. 
—Horsemanship. — Using a Hacienda as an Inn. — A Peasant Liar. — La Ca- 
bana. — An ugly Hole in the Dark. 

My good reader, I am going to take you into my confidence 
so far as to tell you what I have been doing in the whole day 
since I translated the paragraph above. I have made out a key, 
changing the name and residence of nearly every person that I 
am hereinafter to mention. If you will take my book in hand, 
and come into the Cauca to track me out, you will find every 
brook, hill, and hole as I am now to lay them down. So, too, 
in general, as to the houses, the descriptions shall be very exact, 
only in three or four cases I may move them for special reasons. 

But the characters that I shall draw shall be as faithful as I 
am capable of making them. In one or two cases a conjecture 
shall be suppressed, but no ascertained fact withholden that 
would throw light on human nature. No character shall be a 
composition, or taken from two or more individuals ; and, how- 
ever much the scene of an occurrence may be varied, the char- 
acters in it shall be real, and generally shall bear the same name 
throughout. 

And now we will go out on the plain, and meet the first party 
that we judge worth our study, as they may be coming in from 
the country. As we stand by the pond, in which live the shell- 
fish mentioned a few pages back, we see a party approaching. 

* Atraso is the reverse of progreso — progress — an idea almost worshiped by 
the Granadinos. Unfortunately, of the presence of this Messiah of theirs we find 
too little evidence, but their desire for it is earnest and universal. 



380 NEW GEANADA. 

They suit my purpose, for I know them well. The portly, in- 
telligent gentleman that leads the van is Senor Eladio Vargas 
(Murgueitio), a well-educated gentleman, who is returning from 
his hacienda, on the banks of the Tulua, to his home in Car- 
tago. He has studied in Lleras' Colegio in Bogota, as have all 
the best-educated gentlemen of my acquaintance ; and, like 
many of them, he is a violent political enemy of his preceptor, 
and you must make allowance for all he says of him. We al- 
ways have to make allowance for some things even in our test 
friends, and I must confess my fear that Don Eladio does not 
always stop with exaggeration even. 

In the house of a respectable merchant in Bogota he found 
his wife, Seiiora Susana Pinzon de Yargas, an amiable, not over- 
energetic lady, with whom he is riding, and to whom he is very 
attentive and truly kind. I am able to say that the Spanish 
race make far superior husbands to the French, nor do I know 
that, in this respect, they are excelled in the world. Dona Su- 
sana learned what she knows chiefly by being immured in the 
school of the widow of President Santander. She is not, 
however, greatly inclined to books. She is, at least, respectful 
to the Church, and wears a carnelian cross, the gift of a pope to 
a bishop, who was her uncle. She is just now intensely suffer- 
ing with ear-ache, and to this is added the fatigue of a journey 
50 miles from the banks of the Tulua. 

With her comes her sister, Senorita Manuela Pinzon. Edu- 
cated with Susana by the care of the Seiiora de Santander, she 
is perhaps more literary, and in body and mind more active than 
she. As to her personal appearance, the reader must judge for 
himself. But in the figure opposite you see her in the dress 
in which she took a fancy to be pictured, and in which she has 
been wont to display herself and her horsemanship in the Ala- 
meda of Bogota. You would see, on her approach to Carta- 
go, the same horse, bridle, saddle, and face ; but in dress all is 
changed, except the ruana, and possibly the hat. An ordinary 
walking -dress is the basis of her costume. A handkerchief, 
thrown over her head, is kept in place by a fine ruana, lined 
with silk on the under side, and a hat, perhaps a small one, of 
jipijapa, like an ordinary boy's hat, tied under her chin. 

Seiiora Manuela is of a cheerful and lively turn of mind, not 



GENTEEL BUT POOR. 



381 




FASHIONABLE RIDING-DRESS. 



so pious as her sister, but still a faithful attendant at the mass 
on days when absence is sin — on the fasts and feasts. She can 
talk rapidly and much, but she says little that would interest 
those who knew none of her acquaintances. And yet her stock 
of information is considerably above that of ladies in general, 
for she has read a number of novels of Dumas and Sue — trans- 
lated into Spanish, of course, for very few ladies here read 
French. 

But the most decided character of the group is yet to be men- 
tioned. It is the gentleman's sister, Seflorita Elodia Vargas. 
She has a character of her own, as well%s a face easily remem- 
bered. Of a stronger make than most ladies, and with a varied 
life, she has been alike at home in the Cauca, Bogota, and Cho- 
co. There I think she was born, to rule over a hundred slaves, 
that washed gold for her father, ate plantains and fish, and went 
almost naked. They are free, and the family revenues are re- 
duced indeed ; for the gold-washings can not be prosecuted by 



382 NEW GRANADA. 

whites in Choco, and free negroes will not work when they de- 
sire nothing that gold can bring. Hence only one fourth as 
much gold is obtained as before 1852. So the old place in Cho- 
co has gone to ruin, Senor Vargas is dead, and the family must 
live on what the ill-managed Hacienda of La Bibera can yield. 

But all this seems to make little difference with Elodia Var- 
gas (Murgueitio). Dignified, calm, and pious, she seems to be 
above such changes. She is a faithful observer of all the ordi- 
nances of her Church. She is in many respects the head of the 
family, and her strong will is law to the members of the family 
as well as the servants. They lack firmness — she has enough ; 
and her judgment proves the best in the end. 

Just as we re-entered Cartago we passed one of the numerous 
bridges that cross the brooks and ditches which are plenty in the 
plain around. The old wooden structure had given way, and 
let in a gentleman's carga mule. A part of the load had been a 
live Guinea-pig, brought for some days from up the river, which, 
when on the threshold of a new home, had thus finished its mor- 
tal journey. "We crossed the ditch — brook I ought to call it, I 
suppose — without being much bespattered, and in a moment 
more were in the Plaza, and, entering a porton, soon found our- 
selves in the patio of a casa alta. 

As we filed up the stairs, at the head there was another file 
to meet us. Don Eladio found himself first in the arms of his 
widowed mother, Dona Ana Murgueitio de Vargas, a woman of 
nearly sixty, something like her daughter Elodia, though hardly 
as dignified as she will be at her mother's age. I wish it were 
more common for old women to be pretty here, but that can not 
be without education. But of really old women there can not 
be many in the country. I can not think now of an octogena- 
rian of either sex. 

Next in order came a pretty girl of about seventeen — Merce- 
des. Of her parentage? or relations I know little, except that 
Eladio whispered to me, at the first opportunity, " She is the 
daughter of a white man." I should think her mother, too, 
might have been as white as his. 

With two more embracings Eladio's salutations were finish- 
ed. These were with a venerable negro cook, and another serv- 
ant, a few shades lighter, and a little cleaner in dress. In all 



A REAL BED. 383 

these huggings I had no part. The first half of them, or even 
less, would have pleased me as well as the whole ; indeed, I was 
contented with the matter as it was. 

The house had originally been one of magnificent dimensions. 
It occupied three sides of a square, and covered ground enough 
for a large hotel. But it had been inherited by two children, 
who proceeded to run a wall through the middle, with a porton 
on each side, and in the same way the front and back patios 
were divided. Evidences of diminished magnificence in this 
way are visible over all the towns of the Cauca, but in this case 
it was an advantage ; for, had the furniture of the family been 
scattered over double the space, it would have cost them much 
unnecessary walking to go from article to article. 

In addition to the interior corredor, we have balconies over- 
looking the Plaza, and an exterior corredor on the side that 
overlooks a church patio filled with a dense mass of weeds. 
This corredor is our dining-room, and a pleasant one. The 
kitchen is still farther from the street, a large, desolate room, 
without a table or chair, and, withal, somewhat dilapidated in 
its walls. The tinajera, the forge-like cooking-place, and the 
grinding-stone, are all that the room contains. The transit 
from the sala to the dining corredor can not be made without 
passing through the principal dormitory of the family or through 
this kitchen. The road by the dormitory, even had it been the 
longer, would be better to travel in going to dinner. 

One article of furniture surprised me. It was a spacious and 
elegant iron bedstead from Europe, with a wide, thick, and soft 
hair mattress, that might have made a bed for the President, 
had he been a Conservador and their guest. As it is, it seems 
rather an article of curiosity, for I do not know that it has ever 
yet been covered with sheets, unless it be to keep the dust off; 
nor is it of any use except to show what Sybarites the Tem- 
perate Zone harbors. How we all sleep here is more than I can 
say. The ground floor in the rear is a stable, and in front it is 
rented to a family. The servants sleep in the kitchen, or on 
the floor of the principal dormitory. I assign the smaller dor- 
mitory to the queenly, pious Elodia, sprightly Manuela, and 
Mercedes, the white man's daughter. And Eladio, his mother, 
wife, two children, and their nurse, with the two other serv- 



384 NE W GKANADA. 

ants, could find plenty of room in the large dormitory. My 
inseparable friend, the hammock, hangs in the sala, a luxury 
by day and a necessity at night. 

But Susana Pinzon de Vargas has the ear-ache. She is dis- 
tracted with it. It is worse after dinner. She can hardly sit 
still long enough to nurse her babe. And a ball is coming off 
to-night. It is not a hacienda ball, such as we are yet to see, 
but a town ball, such as we saw in the last chapter, from which 
it seems that neither the sick nor those in prison can be spared; 
for Susana went not distracted as I feared, but, needing some 
distraction in her agony, went to the ball, and, as I could not 
attend this evening, I saw her no more till morning. 

In the morning she was no better, and the doctor was called. 
He prescribed cupping, and the barber was accordingly sent for. 
He produced a scarificator, and Dona Susana was surprised that 
so ingenious a piece of mechanism should have strayed beyond 
the walls of the Inquisition. But the proposition of trying its 
multiplied knives on her was simply absurd. And, indeed, scar- 
ification in any form, however proper for others, could never be 
permitted on her. The physician was gone, and when Eladio 
proposed, as a compromise, that she be bled in the arm, she as- 
sented, glad to be thus rid of the barber, and he assented, glad 
thus to gain his fee and be off. 

An accidental discovery here looks worse than it is : let no 
lady faint over it or scream audibly. I happened in the dor- 
mitory one morning before Senor Vargas had risen. He was 
late, for the Senorita Manuela Pinzon, his sprightly sister-in-law, 
was already dressed and conversing with him when he began to 
rise. He sat up in bed stark naked, except so far as covered 
by the bed-clothes, for, like Jaques Couche-tout-nu in the Wan- 
dering Jew, he denudes himself entirely when he goes to bed. 
I do not know whether this custom prevails out of the Cauca : 
I should not have discovered it if it had. 

I can not tell what people do in Cartago. It is a quiet place 
for one in its position. It stands where four great ways of com- 
merce meet. Above is a grazing country, that yields horses, 
mules, beef, and pork. Beef is cheaper on the vast plains of 
the East, in Casanare, for instance, but there they have no de- 
mand for it. Below Cartago is the gold country of Antioquia, 



TEADE OF CARTAGO. 385 

including also part of the province of Cauca, where little food 
is raised. Bough, steep, and rocky, it looks to the plains above 
for its beef and pork, horses and mules. I estimate this dig- 
ging population at 249,822, most of whom eat some beef and 
pork, and use some beasts of burden. West of here is the 
gold-washing, fish-eating province of Choco, with a population 
of 43,639. Enough of these see beef and lard once a year, 
or oftener, to make the population dependent on the pastures 
above Cartago a quarter of a million. 

Some horses and mules are driven over the Quindio, but no 
beef. Dried beef is sold for this journey. Most of the salt 
used in the upper Cauca comes over the Quindio, and a large 
part of the imported goods. Most of the hides of animals raised 
here are put to uses unknown at the North, as mats, beds, bas- 
kets, trunks, packing-boxes, chairs, cordage, harness, fence, 
doors, and other uses too numerous to mention ; so there is no 
hide trade. A tobacco trade is springing up. The cinchona 
of the province of Popayan passes through Cartago, and over 
the Quindio, to avoid the risks of Buenaventura. Tobacco 
makes its exit in both directions. Cacao is raised above, and 
sent through here to the mines. Rice might be. Indigo might 
be exported. 

You would expect merchants here with advertisements out in 
all directions of "Highest cash price paid for cacao;" "Beef 
wanted ;" " Wanted 100 mules ;" " Northern goods given for 
indigo ;" " Coffee received in the smallest quantities for silks 
and hardware." No such thing. Probably no merchant in Car- 
tago ever spent a dollar in advertising. Barter is unknown to 
me, if even the word is found in Spanish. Trueque, the near- 
est word, would hardly suggest the idea. 

Commerce has three stages of existence. First is naked cash, 
without bills, barter, or credit. It is sure — sure as the march 
of a snail. Next comes barter, mixed, of course, with what cash 
there may be in a region. For this the Cauca commerce seems 
waiting. Lastly comes the fast system of cash, bills of credit, 
bank-notes, exchange, double-entry, shaving, great fortunes, and 
splendid bankruptcies for half a million. The light of this mil- 
lennium is yet to dawn here. 

With all this, I am surprised to see so little in the streets of 

Kb 



386 



NEW GRANADA. 




WATER- BOY AT CART AGO. 



Cartago. The most active doings I see are the movements of 
the water-boys. They are mounted on a mule, a horse, or the 
ruins of either, while yet the vital spark remains. To the four 
corners of the saw-horse that serves as a saddle are hung four 
tarras of guadua. The imp to whose mercy the quadruped is 
abandoned rides deep enough into the arm of the La Vieja to 
dip up his water without dismounting. He ought to dip it up 
only on the upper side of the horse, with no other water-boy 
above him, nor any groom washing down horses, nor any bath- 
ers, but you can not make such a scapegrace careful. His mind 
is all bent on running races with water-boys as wretchedly 
mounted as himself. Now he is stopped by a woman that of- 
fers him a cigar if he will hang on her two tarras, and return 
them to her full. He asks no consent of his beast or his em- 
ployer. So a water-boy knows no want of cigars. 



DISSERTATION ON FLEAS. 387 

I can not take leave of Cartago without mentioning the most 
numerous, and by far the most active part of its population. 
The flea is a beautiful object when secured in balsam between 
two plates of glass for the microscope. Trained to drag a chain 
or draw a carriage, as these little hexapods are said to have 
been, they are worthy of the attention of the curious. And or- 
ganize them into an army, and the sharp, slender claws, so beau- 
tifully exhibited in the microscope, show themselves admirable 
for clinging to you, and the curious lancet is a most perfect in- 
strument for perforating the human cuticle. 

But to all these good qualities there are two drawbacks. One 
is his nullibiquity — nirgendheit our German cousins would call 
it — his no-where-ness "when you put your finger on him;" 
and the other is the hardness of his cuirass. It would take me 
till night to tell you of all the adventures which have taught me 
the extent of these qualities. One time I will "put my finger 
on him" really. I crush him, ruin him, pulverize him, and take 
up my finger to feast my eyes on his mangled carcass, when lo ! 
he bounds off eight hundred times his length, and I can almost 
imagine a tiny derisive laugh at the idea of his getting a broken 
leg or a sprained ankle so easily. I can find another more eas- 
ily than catch him again. 

Another time I wet my finger before I put it on him : he 
shall not fool me so. I rub him till I have broken every bone 
in his body, and almost the bones of my finger besides. I stop 
and deliberate whether I will let him up yet. No ; I will make 
assurance doubly sure by giving him one more crushing. Then 
I take my finger off, and lo, " he isn't there !" Of course I look 
foolish. But no mortal can stave off his fate when his time 
comes ; so I find recorded in my diary, " Paila, 9 July, 1853. 
Had a capital day. Dreamed of home last night ; had recent 
beef for dinner ; got a new plant, caught a butterfly, and hilled 
a fiea." The flea that died that day met, doubtless, an acci- 
dental death ; but my last visit to Cartago initiated me into the 
art of flea-catching by incessant practice. I killed dozens of 
them. It was almost worth a journey there. Once I went 
down the La Vieja and bathed. I turned my clothes inside 
out, and with unpitying eye saw no less than six ejected, far 
from any house, to take the chances of the weather ; and all the 
way home I was the sole tenant of my vestments. 



388 NEW 6EANADA. 

But we must leave Cartago. Don Eladio and his wife, her 
sister, and the children, are to start for Tulua. His kindness 
mounted me on an easy horse and a safe one, for he consid- 
ers me a babe in horsemanship. What he would say to one 
whose equestrian education had been finished on a Yankee farm, 
without any farther lessons at the South and West, I can not 
tell. There ought to be no better horsemen in the world than 
those of the Cauca, but you would never observe the fact. 
The Caucano is not proud of his horsemanship. He makes no 
display, and I do not know of any one who has any reputation 
as a horseman, or wishes any. They ride as if by instinct and 
of course. Still, I think we have some greatly exaggerated ac- 
counts of Spanish-American horsemanship. 

We soon passed rock in situ — not in a mountain, not in a 
high hill. The road had once passed over a steep knoll, 15 feet 
high. Travel had cut it down to a level with the plain for a 
space of 10 feet in width. 

The sides and bottom of this cut are horizontal strata of sand- 
stone. Farther up I found strata of infusorial earth in it. It is 
so soft and so white that it is used as chalk, and both are call- 
ed tiza. The best I saw was 10 or 15 miles above Cartago, 
where I picked out a specimen from the bank for my friends at 
home.* 

I can not say enough of the country over which we swiftly 
sweep in a large and gay troop. Bosques, knolls, green glades, 
gentle slopes, hill-sides, and small plains came along in an ever- 
varying succession. Only the brooks were mute. They had 
neither velocity nor pebbles to give them voice. They added 
no beauty where they alone could have added any. 

At Saragoza, a small village, some who had mounted to ac- 
company us took leave and turned back. Just there I saw the 
first and last live specimen of the sloth, here called Perico lijero 
(swift Perico). It may be the Acheus Ai. A'i is a natural in- 
terjection expressive of pain, and is given to the animal on ac- 
count of his doleful cries. He was as large as a middle-sized 
dog, and clung to the stick to which he was tied, and by which 
his possessor bore him on his shoulder. They live back down- 
ward, in a state of perpetual suspense that would be quite dis- 

* It was lost. 



PEDRO THE LIAR. 389 

agreeable to ordinary animals. They are no more helpless on 
the ground than a lamb would be in a tree. Specimens of mam- 
mals are so scarce here that the traveler should never presume 
on future opportunities. Much to my regret, I had to leave this. 

At dark I discovered the head of the column entering the gate 
of Senor Pedro Sanchez, a few miles north of Obando. It stands 
somewhat out of the way, on a pleasant knoll. I did not sup- 
pose at the time that he had any better business than keeping 
a sort of tavern, by giving his rooms up to travelers. I have 
since learned not to judge men by their furniture. The family 
left the sala to our sole occupancy. The spirit of delay, that 
guides all travelers' movements here, made our morning start to 
hang off till 3 P.M. For this we made up by a dinner between 
9 and 10. My short, rapid ride fatigued me exceedingly, more 
so than the hardest day's walk. 

While waiting in the piazza for dinner, they diverted me with 
the babe-carrier by setting him to lying. He was a thick-set 
Choco negro of about 40 or 45, whose comical ways of pacifying 
the babe on his back, when it worried, had diverted me much 
more than did the lies he now told, whieh had no other merit 
than their size and coolness. Among the rest, he said he was 
engaged to a beautiful princess in Europe, and was going on 
soon to claim his bride. He appeared fully satisfied when he 
found he had earned from me the surname of Pedro el Embus- 
tero (Pedro the Liar). 

We were obliged to supply our own water, and that delayed 
us considerably. The peon that went after it had with him an- 
other to dispel his fears, light his way, or drive off the wild 
beasts with a bright-flaming brand that resembled pitch-pine, 
but was called cipres. Neither this nor cedro are coniferous 
trees. The latter may be Amyris or Cedrela. Of the former I 
could obtain leaves only. 

It was a pleasant January evening as we sat out there in the 
piazza, neither too warm nor too cold, till our dinner was ready, 
and then I was soon hung up in my hammock, and the others 
spread round miscellaneously, and all asleep on tables, poyo, 
and floor. We decided to rise at two, take chocolate immedi- 
ately, and start at three. No such plan is ever executed. We 
left at half past four, but without our chocolate. It was still 



390 NEW GRANADA. 

quite dark when we were finding our way southward, not with- 
out difficulty, for most of the road was unfenced, and paths led 
in every direction. At daybreak we summoned up a family in 
Obando (formerly Naranjo), who kept a sort of venta, and would 
sell some aguardiente to those of us who needed. 

We then proceeded. We left Pedro el Embustero with his 
babe to make up in diligence what he lacked in fleetness. Na- 
ture has provided the young with means to keep pace with the 
dam, but I know of no means to prevent a babe on negro-back 
being an impediment to the journey of the mother mounted on 
a good horse. Of this we felt the full force to-day. The serv- 
ants and baggage left us behind. 

Here we passed the Rio de los Micos on a respectable uncov- 
ered bridge, the only bridge, in fact, capable of bearing the 
weight of a horse in all this region. I pass no bridge unmen- 
tioned. 

At Victoria we called for breakfast just as the people were 
coming out from mass in a church not far from us. The town, 
if town there be, is small, and, it seems, could spare us nothing 
to eat. A mile or two farther on, and half a mile off our road, 
we were more fortunate. It cost us, however, two hours and a 
half, and as we left it was getting rather warm to travel in the 
sun. 

I saw here my first nispero, the fruit of Achras Sapota, but 
having no resemblance to the zapote, a Matisia. The nispero 
is of the size of a tolerable peach, with a number of quite large 
seeds. It is a comfortable fruit to eat, but there is a gummy 
milk in the skin that repels, and very little in the flavor to in- 
vite a Northern palate. The zapote is just the reverse. It is 
as large as a good-sized apple, and has a thick buff rind, with a 
reddish-yellow pulp within. It is a little fibrous, but of a 
pleasant flavor. It breaks open readily, and discloses a huge 
seed within, not unknown to us of the North on account of its 
beautiful, smooth, chestnut-colored back, with a rougher, whitish 
hilum occupying the whole under surface. The pulp is gener- 
ally eaten away from the rind, which is at last thrown away. 
Neither is a first-class fruit. 

I am sorry we must leave our party so soon, but I have a 
call to make at La Cabana, a hacienda west of the road a few 



LA CABANA. 391 

miles above Victoria. With earnest adieus to Susana and 
Manuela Pinzon, and a real reluctance in separating me from 
Seiior Vargas, and other gentlemen to whom I could not well 
introduce the reader, as we may not meet them again except as 
strangers, I rein off to the right, and soon a hillock intervenes 
between me and the cavalcade. I pursue a westward course for 
a surprising distance. I have considered our road as lying be- 
tween the Cauca and mountain forests, that have been unoccu- 
pied since the extermination of the Indians. So it is in theory; 
but this belt of pasturage, which is often not a mile wide be- 
tween the forest of the Cauca and that of the Quindio, may ex- 
tend far into either. 

Finally, I wind round a marsh surrounded by hillocks, one 
of which is crowned by the buildings that bear the modest 
name of The Cabin. Dr. Guevara meets me at the door, and 
his wife, Sefiora Monzon, is happy to meet one who knows her 
father. It is supposed that the name once was Monson, and 
that her ancestry is partly English. The house seems an ac- 
cidental combination of three straggling buildings, which seem 
to mark out, if not inclose, a patio. In one respect, it is the 
most admirably situated hacienda in the Cauca. It is on the 
innermost knoll, overlooking a broad and beautiful pasture that 
extends almost to the very banks of the river. We can not see 
the tawny flood that we saw last as we passed its mouth on the 
Magdalena, but it is here hid from view by but a narrow skirt 
of woods, and the hills of the other banda are quite near us. 

But there is one drawback — the water. Most houses stand 
near a brook. All towns must. I know of no well, nor any 
name for one in New Granada. I know of but two springs (at 
Mesa and Libraida) which are used. La Cabana is the only 
hacienda that I know to be supplied directly from the Cauca. 
Their tinajera contains seven huge tinajas. A troop of negro 
women go to the river every morning, and bring water on their 
heads to fill the one emptied the preceding day. It stands a 
week to settle, and is then fit to drink. This may not seem 
like drinking from a deep well or a spring that is cool all sum- 
mer, nor yet like drinking iced Croton water, but such luxuries 
can not be known here. The Cauca water is as godd, perhaps, 
as any in the world, and may be compared to water at St. Louis 



392 NEW GKANADA. 

without ice. Elsewhere I have only drunk it at ferries, mud 
and all. 

La Cabana has another attraction. It has a study, a room 
really devoted to reading and writing. Dr. Guevara's library 
must amount to over 100 volumes, all in Spanish and French. 
He takes also the Correo de Ultramar, as does also a gentleman 
in Cartago. It is encouraging to meet these signs of a literary 
taste. 

I gained the highway at a point above where we left it. I 
went south of La Cabana naif a mile, crossed a brook called Rio 
Hondo, in a deep ravine, from which the ascent was the ugliest 
I have ever seen yet. Then I wound around bosques and knolls 
for a mile more to the road. One night afterward I retraced 
these steps after dark, and dark it was when I arrived at the 
brink of the ravine, hoping, bad as it must be, that it was the 
very same spot where I had risked my neck in daylight before. 
Conceive what the descent must be in the dark. Suffice it, I 
never yet have broken my neck. It has not often been in so 
much danger as there. Arrived at the other bank, I found the 
bars at the top converted into an impregnable fence, not to be 
passed by a horse without destroying a great deal of human la- 
bor. I looked above and below, then tied my horse, and fin- 
ished my journey on foot. Seiior Guevara sent a servant, who 
brought in my horse by a circuit of some miles. The bars had 
been fenced up in consequence of the carelessness of passers, 
who left them open and allowed his cattle to stray. 



VANILLA. 393 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

ROLDANILLO AND LAW. 

A Gentleman Liar. — Pleasant Family. — A nice Swim. — Over the Cauca. — Rich 
Family and few Comforts. — La Mona. — Sabbath Eve. — Roldanillo. — Good 
Priest. — Select School. — Church Organ. — Law. — Superiority of our System. — 
Incredulous Priest. — Civil Suits. — A queer Fruit. — Swimming the Cauca. 

Don Eladio Vargas and I had been riding from Cartago to 
Saragoza when we fell in with Belisario Cabal. He is a young 
LL.D., who lives I know not how, unless it be by his interest 
in the Hacienda of Chaqueral. Law pays little or nothing here. 
I was, as usual, trying to extract from him any information that 
he might possess about the resources and elements of wealth of 
the country. He stated that he had great hopes of vanilla. I 
remarked to him that any export worth a dollar or more a pound 
would be likely to be able to bear the costs of getting to the 
ocean ; but no cheap ones, at present. He said that he had 
10,000 plants of vanilla already set out, and hoped yet to in- 
crease the quantity. I was glad ; hoped they would succeed ; 
should be very happy to see them ; I had seen none but spon- 
taneous vanilla plants. He hoped I would call at Chaqueral 
some time when he was at home. After more talk of the same 
sort we arrived at Saragoza, and Belisario went on. 

I had better now speak of vanilla, although hardly in place 
here. It is not the Tonqua bean, but a long pod of a similar 
flavor. It is no bean at all, but is filled with very minute seeds. 
It is an orchid plant. The best species seems to be Vanilla ar- 
omatica, but some other species have some of the peculiar flavor, 
or rather odor, but perhaps in a less degree. I can not tell 
whether the Vanilla aromatica grows here. I think it does, 
from the appearance of the fruit in size, shape, and odor, but 
have no description to compare the plant with. Most orchids 
grow on trees, pseudo-parasites, not drawing any nourishment 
from the tree, as does the mistletoe, here a very common plant. 
The genus Vanilla consists of thick-leaved vines, that cling to 



394 NEW GRANADA. 

the bark of trees, but have their roots in the ground. They 
grow in deep woods, and, as orchids are apt to do, very sparsely. 
You are by no means sure of finding two specimens of the same 
species on the same acre or in the same day. I have spent 
hours and hours in hunting vanilla flowers, but never found but 
two. The cultivation of such a plant would be very peculiar, 
but might be a mine of wealth should it succeed. 

When Belisario had gone on, Eladio told me that all he had 
been telling me was a string of lies. 

I stopped, and looked hard in his face. Couldn't I under- 
stand Spanish? 

" He has not a single root of vanilla in cultivation," said he. 
" It is all lies." 

So, when I had proceeded up from La Cabana to Las Lajas 
— Flat Stones — River, I turned off to the east toward Chaque- 
ral, not to see a vanilla plantation, but a liar. A gentleman liar 
would be less of a curiosity now ; but my readers will excuse 
me — I was green then, and believed what gentlemen told me. A 
man needs to be a year in a country before he can begin the 
study of the character of its inhabitants to advantage. I want- 
ed to see how Belisario would look, what he would say, when I 
insisted on seeing his vanilla plantation. 

Leaving to my right a house on a pretty knoll, on the right 
bank of the Rio de Las Lajas, I passed through a hill by one of 
those hoof-worn cuts so common on the Cauca, even on planta- 
tion roads. I entered on a plain beyond, or the valley of a 
brook. Here I met young Belisario, who was very glad to see 
me. He was going up to Libraida on business, but he would 
turn back and introduce me to his aunt and cousin (that noun 
was feminine — prima), and would be back to a late dinner. In 
fact, he does not live at the hacienda, but at Buga, where he at- 
tends to his business. It was fortunate that I found him near 
home. 

So we turned round, and proceeded in toward the mountains 
by an unending series of knolls, plains, cuts, and little preci- 
pices of 6 to 10 feet. We bent northward, too, till I began to 
think that he was leading me by a roundabout way to Victoria, 
and that there was not even a Chaqueral, an aunt, or a prima, 
any more than a vanilla-field. At length we saw the house of 



THE MIDDLING CLASS. 395 

a tenant, a field for fattening cattle, and then the house. It was 
a mere cottage, on the top of a steep knoll, not far from the 
right hank of that troublesome Rio Hondo that I found south 
of La Cabana. 

The house was a cottage of three rooms. Along the front 
ran a corredor, and before it was a fence half down the hill, with 
an entrance gate. Behind was a smooth, well-swept area, that 
might be called a patio ; but there were no buildings around it 
except a shed to cook under, in place of the kitchen that had 
been burned down. 

Of course, the central room we entered was the sala. On the 
north end (left hand) was the family-room (very small), and on 
the opposite end was a room for Belisario, or, in his absence, for 
Don Modesto Gamba, his uncle. Opposite the front door was 
the back door, that opened out on a diminutive piazza or corre- 
dor, with two small closets, or pantries, at the ends. Such were 
the reduced halls of the vanilla planter. Don Modesto seemed 
to be a sort of partner or tenant of the young lawyer. He was 
now out, probably at work with his own hands. Dona Paz Ca- 
bal de Gamba was sitting at a table, making cigars. The pri- 
ma, Isabel Gamba (Cabal), was sitting by the door on the floor, 
making a gown. Her cousin introduced me, and wished me a 
pleasant time till his return. 

All hopes of vanilla being postponed till after dinner (most 
probably at night), I began to make the best of circumstances. 
I was evidently not unknown to them, though I had never heard 
of them. Isabel was about 18, and wore the peasant-dress, which 
suited her very well. If there is some negro blood in her veins, 
it is not perceptible. The gown she was making was for her- 
self — she dresses, then, sometimes as a lady. A novel, trans- 
lated from the French, lay on the table. She loved reading, 
but never had any education. Cousin Belisario lent her books. 
Her brother, a student in Bogota, had given her some. 

Here, then, was an intermediate link between the aristocracy 
and the peasantry of the country. She belonged rather to the 
latter by birth, but, although she had never been educated, she 
had contrived to pick up enough to make her really quite attract- 
ive, as more than one aristocratic Caucano would acknowledge, 
it* he dared speak his mind. My own opinion, at this distance 



396 NE W GRANADA. 

of time and place, is this, that she is just the most agreeable na- 
tive lady that I have found in all New Granada. Her father 
and mother are plain, good people, that seem quite contented 
with their girl, and hope the best for their absent son. 

All their domestic help consisted of two little black mute 
girls of perhaps 8 and 10. They are not idiots, and are very 
lively, can hear as well as any body, understand all you say, 
but do not speak more than a syllable or two. I have watched 
them closely, and even studied them, as in many points they re- 
sembled those remarkable dwarfs exhibited in the United States 
as "Aztec children," the remains of an extinct race. I had 
busied myself with those "Aztecs," and had fortunately dis- 
covered, by a letter from Granada, their history, and that they 
were dwarfed specimens of a mixed race of ordinary size. The 
little mutes at Chaqueral scarcely differed from them except in 
size. They were lively, active, cheerful, ready to do any thing 
that their strength permitted, but could not be made to speak a 
word. 

I spent the day very pleasantly reading and talking, with one 
or two strolls along the margin of the stream. In one of our 
chats Isabel looked up from her work, and asked me if I had 
any children. 

" I never was married," I replied. 

" Belisario told me that you was a bachelor, but I thought 
quite probably you might have children nevertheless." 

" Were I so unscrupulous as to be a father before marriage, 
I should be enough so to deny it also. Were I suspected of 
such a thing, I have not a friend that would not close his doors 
against me. Such persons are not admitted into the society 
that I frequent." 

I did not tell her of the upper-ten-dom of New York, where 
only poor and vulgar debauchees are rejected, perhaps for the 
reason that follows : 

" Were we to be so particular here," says Dona Paz, " we 
should have to live without society." 

They thought with me that it was a great misfortune that 
things were so, but she did not know that their religion had any 
thing to do with the laxity of their morals. I had been before 
asked in the same way about my children by a gentleman 



HUNTING A VANILLA FIELD. 397 

who had already invited me to an intimacy with his amiable 
family. 

At night Belisario returned from Libraida, and his uncle from 
his work, and we three sat down, I at the head, and they at the 
side of the coarse, long, substantial table. I had the post of 
honor there in the arm-chair ; they sat on the poyo. Isabel 
stood and looked on, to see that we wanted nothing. After we 
were through, the dishes were removed to the ground at the back 
corredor, where she and her mother sat down and ate. 

On another occasion, when they had with them Belisario's sis- 
ter, Virginia Cabal (pronounced Virr-hin / -yah), and the gentle- 
men were both away, I protested that I was not used to eating 
alone, and they must eat with me. Two more plates were put 
on, and the young ladies sat down, but they refused to eat. 
They conversed till I was through, and then dined with Dofia 
Paz on the ground in the corredor. I think the custom of the 
women eating apart from the " lords of creation," and on the 
floor, is giving way a little. The best families in the Cauca do 
not practice it. 

In the morning, the first topic was Vanilla. The plantation 
was too distant to visit, but we would go and see some sponta- 
neous specimens. Don Modesto accompanied us. We passed 
up the stream some way, and he showed me a plant climbing 
quite high on a tree. It was another species of Vanilla, and not 
V. aromatica, as was clear from the fruit, which was shorter than 
the true pod, and not triangular, but flat, and more than an inch 
broad. I judged the pod to be bicarpellary. 

But the cultivation of the precious plant was so important 
that I would grudge no time to see it with my own eyes ; so 
after breakfast we mounted, and went inward toward the mount- 
ain. We went in farther than I have ever since seen any oc- 
cupied land, except near Tulua. We came to a pasture that is 
shut in mostly by a ravine and a stout fence ; beyond this we 
entered the woods, so that there was nothing but a forest be- 
tween us and the neighborhood of the Magdalena. Here he 
showed me three plants of a vanilla that he assured me he had 
planted. I examined them, and pronounced them likely to live. 
I happened to know that we had already passed over his line 
into the property of another man. I thought it inhuman to carry 
my vanilla-hunt any farther, and "was fully satisfied." 



398 NEW GKANADA. 

We looked at another spot where he thinks the water brack- 
ish. Salt is very high here, being brought a little over 300 miles 
on the backs of mules. It is only given to fatting cattle. Cha- 
queral is a hacienda for fatting bulls. They are bought for 6 
to 8 dollars each at the age of 3 to 4 years, subjected to the req- 
uisite surgery, and with six months of Guinea-grass and salt 
are ready for slaughter. There are but two cultivated grasses 
here, Guinea-grass and Para. These pastures only are fenced. 
Brackish water here would be a fortune. I have often helped 
hunt for it, but I have never been sure that any contained chlor- 
ide of sodium. 

On our return, we found that a gentleman from the next ha- 
cienda had called. I saw him here often at other times. He 
plays cards there with the ladies, makes himself agreeable, and, 
as he is a bachelor, he may yet make Miss Isabel happy. I call 
him Don Justo, without troubling the reader with a surname. 

Belisario Cabal "is a taxidermist. He setup and presented 
to the National Museum of Bogota many, if not most of the 
ornithological specimens there." I suggested that they would 
be more appreciated by the New York Lyceum — a worthy in- 
stitution, that, at the expense of a few excellent business-men 
and literary gentlemen, has gathered quite a museum, which 
they keep open to the public gratuitously whenever they have 
funds to procure chambers for the invaluable collection. He 
promises to send them some birds. When he does, if yet this 
book survive to another edition, I hereby promise to remove all 
my vanilla from Chaqueral to some other place, and say nothing 
about the cultivated plants. 

I went once to Chaqueral on purpose for a swim with the 
ladies. There is a deep spot — charco — in a stream (I shall not 
tell you where it is), that is so long that it is called el Credo — 
the Creed. The Creed, I believe, is the longest office in the ro- 
sary, and the extraordinary length of this deep, still water gave 
it the name. It is, in fact, a dozen rods long, with an average 
depth of three feet, and an almost uniform width of five or six. 
It is embowered in deep woods, and bathed with the coolest air 
of a perpetual summer. Were man born only to swim, his Eden 
would have been here. 

To our party for the Credo, besides Senora Cabal, Isabel, and 



A SWIMMING PARTY. 399 

Virginia, was added Don Justo, a lady who was first married 
about three years since, and her daughter, a simple, not very 
captivating girl of about 16. 

As we were riding there, Isabel asks if my horse can not pace. 
I think so, though now on an easy trot. She advises me to 
draw in the reins and whip him up. A pace results, but she 
decides that it is not spontaneous, but learned. Afterward she 
asks me if I did not speak last night of having come on a horse. 
Doubtless I did, since I rode neither mule, donkey, nor bull. 
She informs me that it is a mare, and that she is with foal. I 
mentally conclude that I never would try to cheat her in a horse- 
trade. 

Our horses are at length tied to trees near the Credo. Justo 
has brought with him no bathing-dress but a handkerchief. As 
he sees me differently provided, he decides not to go in at all. 
The mothers likewise do not go in. The Senoritas appear in 
long robes, open a little on the back, but quite as appropriate as 
any thing not " Bloomer" can be. The stranger-girl can not 
swim. Justo and the mothers, seated on the rock, chat and 
watch us. We spatter them a little. 

I was dressed before the others left the water. I was talking 
with Virginia as she was combing her hair preparatory to dress- 
ing. At length Justo calls me to him, while I am sitting there 
with my back to her. He kindly tells me it is not pleasant to 
a lady to have a gentleman so near her when dressing. So we 
stand there talking with our faces toward her, and not four rods 
off, till she and the others are ready to ride. Truly etiquette is 
mystery. 

It is with great reluctance that I leave the family of Serior 
Gamba. But, before I go, Isabel must show me her garden. A 
space twenty feet by eight is inclosed with slats of guaduas 
seven feet long, placed on end. Four of them are loose, so that 
they can be partly taken out, and make a hole large enough for 
a sheep to walk through. Here we creep in. The most inter- 
esting article I find is five stalks of wheat thirty inches high. 
I think she will get five heads of wheat in harvest-time, but not 
of a very good quality. This experiment proves nothing. This 
is poor from other circumstances than a climate naturally un- 
favorable. A large crop might fail from reasons that may not 



400 NEW GEANADA. 

affect this. It is said that wheat has grown in places of this 
altitude, till pests, animal or vegetable, incapable of existing in 
colder places, had so multiplied upon it as to render it unprofit- 
able. But I am spending a great while in so very small a 
garden. 

We return to Las Lajas, and go straight across the road to 
the river. Dry land approaches nearer the river here than in 
any other place I know of. A shout to a sugar-mill opposite,. 
and the use of a friend's name, brings over a canoe for a gratu- 
itous ferriage. We wish to visit the Hacienda of La Vega- 
Here we see the Cauca at the lowest point I have ever seen it 
below the mouth. I have never seen it except at ferries and at 
Vijes, so completely is it protected by morasses. It may here 
be from a quarter to half a mile wide, and identical in appear- 
ance with the upper Magdalena and the Missouri, a river of 
dilute mud. 

Three plants fixed my attention in a short walk above the 
ferry. Here alone I have seen the yuca in blossom. It was 
nearly three feet high, with a spreading top, and rather pretty,, 
smooth leaves. Next was the almendron, Attalea amygdalina 
— a palm with scarce any stem, so that its head seemed to rest 
on the ground. In the centre of a great crown of leaves was a 
mass of fruits, a spatha crowded with nuts. The kernel resem- 
bles the almond very much, only it is firmer in the texture, and 
I did not perceive any taste of Prussic acid. Next I came into 
a thicket of jiraca. The leaves are sold off the ground from this 
thicket, so as to be a profitable article of cultivation. 

I can not tell how I came to the cane-mill of La Vega, so I 
wilLtell you whom I found there. First, there was the owner, 
Don Eamon Gonzalez, his wife, Kita Pinto de Gonzalez, her sis- 
ter, Eeyes Pinto, and too many little ones to count. They have 
come down here for a campaign of making dulces of various 
kinds, particularly alfandoque. They tell me they are all through, 
and I have come in very good season, as in an hour they would 
have started home. 

My horse has barely rested from his fatiguing swim when we 
mount — that is, as many of us as there are animals for. Each 
horse carries an adult and a child, and when the horses are all 
occupied, there remain on foot only the proprietor, his wife, and 



EICH AND COMFORTLESS. 401 

their babe. Said babe was naked when I came upon them, but 
in compliment to me, I suppose, they put on her a thin calico 
dress. I am much surprised that they, in particular, should be 
left on foot, but they tell me that it is not far that they have to 
walk — about a mile, in fact. 

My share of the burden was little Dolores, a girl of five. 
They generally called her La Mona — the monkey — so that for 
a long time I knew her by no other name. Even now I am not 
sure that I have it right. The little creature had been in per- 
petual motion, and, once on horseback, dropped immediately 
asleep. 

We at length come to the road from Cartago to Roldanillo, 
and then to a house. It belongs to Don Ramon, but he lives 
two miles farther on. This house is the residence of his wife's 
father, Sefior Pinto, her sister Reyes, and several little children 
that I have not counted. Reyes is unmarried, and these chil- 
dren are all accidental. 

The house consists of two cottages, with a space between 
them for a patio. It is dusk, and we sit there in preference. 
Nothing is said about dinner, probably because it would be 
idle conversation, there being nothing whereon any speculation 
could be based, nor in which it would result. I assure you such 
things are forgotten here with very little inconvenience. It is 
all a notion that two good meals a day at least are essential to 
health and happiness. Many are the days that I have taken 
nothing after breakfast but a single small cup of thick choco- 
late, a ripe, roasted plantain, a saucer of molasses, brown sugar, 
or preserves, and then a drink of water, and have done very well. 
So I did this evening, sitting on a pile of jipijapa leaves, which 
I preferred to the bare ground, in company with the two ladies 
and their various children, legitimate and otherwise. 

Don Ramon had gone to La Vega, and brought back with 
him a bundle of letters for me. It will illustrate the result of 
a combination of all sorts of obstacles to the free transit of let- 
ters to state that I then learned the death of a sister that I sup- 
posed was in usual health. She had been dead 363 days. 

Seiior Gonzalez and family went early next morning to La 
Vega. I should describe it as two cabins standing in a sheep- 
fold. The front yard was, in fact, occupied by a considerable 

Cc 



402 NEW GKANADA. 

flock of sheep, and the corredor served them for hovel. No at- 
tempt was made to keep it clean, for it would be useless unless 
other lodgings were assigned to the sheep. Within was an ab- 
sence of comfort that was very striking in a man of so much 
foresight, intelligence, and wealth as Don Ramon. He is an in- 
valuable officer in the district, a clear-sighted, enterprising man. 
His business is prosperous, and he has as much money as he 
can well invest. He is no miser, but spends freely whenever he 
has occasion. 

Yet, besides his kitchen, his whole house is three small rooms 
with earth floors. The sala is 12 feet square. It has a poyo 
running all round, two heavy, coarse arm-chairs, that belonged 
to his grandfather, General Gonzalez, and an immovable table, 
made by fastening a board 30 inches long and 18 wide on the 
tops of four stakes driven into the ground. It is conveniently 
located in a corner, so that the poyo may serve as seat at one 
side and one end. Hence two chairs are all that are needed, 
and he has no more in the house. His bed-room is 12 feet by 
7. Two shelves, 7 feet by 4, and 2 feet from the ground, are 
the beds. In the remaining four feet hangs a frame in which 
the babe sleeps. She can thus be swung by the occupants of 
either bed. The opposite room contains saddles, boxes, etc., 
and is a general receptacle for things not in immediate use. 

The oldest girl, Mercedes, comes home from school at Rol- 
danillo. She is about eight, and Elena, who comes with us 
from the sugar-works, six. So they have four children, all 
girls. Mercedes is a cordial, sociable child. I wished to hear 
her read, but there was nothing in the house for her to read. 
They have a house in Roldanillo, and all their books are there. 
Elena is shy, strong-tempered, and unfriendly. La Mona, on 
the other hand, becomes my friend at once — is never so happy 
as when in the hammock with me. The sala has that conven- 
iency always swinging, a seat by day, my bed at night. Or- 
dinary guests sleep on the poyo, or on a hide on the floor, for 
he has not a table large enough to sleep on. 

As I have an F in my name, it is supposed, of course, that 
it is Francisco. It is quite a relief for me to have a name that 
every body can pronounce — a luxury, in fact. I wish I had 
borrowed a good name before I left home to use here. As I 



NEGLECT OF FRUIT. 403 

am hunting flowers with the children, I injudiciously mention 
that I do not like the name of Mercedes, as it is plural — mer- 
cies. Mercedes does not like the name of Francisco. She is 
nonsuited by being informed that my name is not Francisco, 
and is eager to learn what it is, in order not to like that. She 
will never find out. Still, she likes me and I her, but we do 
not like each other's names. 

Our little table is large enough. There are but two to eat at 
it. Rita and the children eat on the floor of the back corredor. 
I miss something at these meals, and more than the cookery is 
at fault. 

The want of fruit is a great privation. Practically, fruit here 
reduces itself to ripe plantains, bananas, and oranges. Ripe 
plantains are a necessity to me. I meet bananas about once a 
month, and have eaten as many as ten at once. Not half the 
oranges are fit to eat. Though the best oranges in the world 
can be raised here, I do not know of a good orange-tree between 
here' and Ibague. Don Ramon owns four houses and some thou- 
sands of acres of the best land on the face of the earth, on which 
nine tenths of the fruits of the world would grow, and I do not 
know that he has a single tree, bush, vine, or herb that yields 
an eatable fruit except the staff of life, the plantain. Does the 
reader protest that I am not keeping probability in view? I 
answer, that, were I making up a character, it should be more 
natural to the Anglo-Saxon, but I must put down things as I 
find them. 

Let us now look at the town residence of Don Ramon Gonza- 
lez. The village of Roldanillo stands in a nook of the Caldas 
chain, or Western Cordillera, below the mouths of the La Paila 
and Las Canas, and above that of Lajas, Hondo, and Micos riv- 
ers, all of which come in from the east, and are variously and 
incorrectly laid down on the maps. Rio Frio comes out of the 
western mountains, and empties into the Cauca above the vil- 
lage. The census tables, which give the population of districts 
only, give a clew to the comparative size of villages. With rare 
exceptions, the more populous a district, the larger its village. 
Thus, Roldanillo district, with a population of 4800, must have 
at its "head" — cabeza (which is also the cabecera (capital) of 
the Canton of Roldanillo) — a population of some 4000. Here we 



404 NE W GRANADA. 

may expect physicians, schools, balls, and respectable festivals. 
It is not strange, then, that the Gonzalez children were all born 
here, are to be educated here, are to dance here, and to spend 
their money here. 

Indeed, we would in charity hope that here is their residence, 
and that it is only occasionally that they occupy for a few weeks 
the mud cottages of La Vega. It is not so — can not be so. Don 
Ramon has no faithful mayordomo — overseer — as may some- 
times be found east of the Quindio. He must see with his* own 
eyes, and be present constantly, or every thing stops and goes 
wrong. Still, the town house is much more respectable in size, 
material, and furniture. It is large enough, if not with rooms 
enough. It has but five rooms indeed, including kitchen and 
stable ; but all these are spacious, and all, except the stable, in 
the upper story of an adobe house. The bedsteads and table 
are movable, and as elegant as might be expected from the hands 
of a rough carpenter in a land where the lathe is unknown. 

In fact, the only approximation to a lathe I have seen here is 
a contrivance to make an object revolve three or four times in 
one direction, and as many in the contrary. 

Don Ramon has also a chest of books here. I think one vol- 
ume has been added in his own day, the Colmena Espanola — 
Spanish Hive. It appears to be a translation of the Penny Mag- 
azine, and, were copies plenty, would have done a good work for 
the rising race. I did not see any book that I thought had been 
purchased by his father, but previous generations appear to have 
been much better patrons of the bookseller. Thus all the books 
had passed the minimum point, and age now only adds to their 
value. 

On the Sabbath I drew from this treasury a Latin work on 
Jewish antiquities, which, if compiled from the knowledge and 
traditions of the Jews in Spain, ought to have a peculiar inter- 
est at this day. There was a rope-dancer to exhibit that even- 
ing, and, as all the rest of the family wished to go, La Mona was 
hired to stay with me and a servant by the loan of a pair of 
side-combs that belonged to Mercedes. They were of tortoise 
shell, ornamented with bugles. Imagine me, then, seated at the 
table, with a tallow-candle in the candlestick, bending over the 
old parchment-bound Latin volume, and resolved to have a Sab- 



LA MONA. 405 

bath evening to myself. La Mona was rightly named : in mis- 
chief she closely approximated the more quiet of the monkey 
tribe. When the coast is clear, the first thing she does is to 
strip herself as naked as any other monkey — except the side- 
combs. Then she climbs np on the table, and seats herself 
near my book. Next, she takes out her combs, picks all the 
bugles off them, gets some into the cracks in the table, and bur- 
ies others in the tallow that runs down into the base of the 
candlestick. The servant has no authority over her. Rarely 
does the mother try to exercise any, though the child is not often 
so completely let loose. Next, she must play with the candle. 
When she had aided my lucubrations over Jewish antiquities 
about an hour, I grew tired, and told her if she took my candle 
again I would blow it out. A moment after we were in total 
darkness. The servant offered to go to the neighbors' and light 
the candle, but I told her to let it be. " Come to me, Monkey," 
I said, and the little thing snuggled down into my arms, and in 
five minutes more was fast asleep. I rolled her in a cloth and 
laid her on a bedstead. 

At 11 the family returned, bringing their chairs with them. 
On all such occasions the spectators must find their own seats, 
and it is so even in the theatre of Bogota. Thus closed my 
Sabbath in the family of Ramon Gonzalez. 

One day a boy came in from the street bringing up my little 
Greek Testament. La Mona had thrown it off the balcony. 
I had to tie a string to it and hang it up on a high nail, as if to 
put it out of the reach of ants. I did not wish her to play with 
my tooth-brush, and hid it behind a little doll tied into a rock- 
ing-chair, placed on a high antique chest of drawers. The spite- 
ful, shy Elena discovered my hiding-place, and proclaimed that 
Francisco (Fran-thees'-co) had put his little brush in the chair 
of the baby-god! What I had taken for a plaything was, then, 
an object of religious regard, if not of worship. 

Elena was mischievous too. I was sitting reading at a bal- 
cony one day, when she brought forward a book I had borrow- 
ed, and threatened to throw it down into the street. I told her 
if she did I would strike her. She did not believe it. La Mona, 
too, had brought another book, and at the same instant both 
threw them down. I boxed their ears. A great outcry was the 



406 NEW GRANADA. 

result. Elena ran off screaming, and never came near me again 
that day nor the next. La Mona threw herself into my lap, and 
sobbed for a long time, and would not leave me for an hour. 

Filial irreverence runs wild in New Granada. I have seen a 
girl of 8, the daughter of a most respectable and high-spirited 
mother, strike her and call her the vilest names known in any 
language, and that with impunity. I am not prepared to assert 
that family discipline is known at all here. Less would be need- 
ed than with us, by far. As it is less called for, it is not so 
strange that it is in almost entire disuse. 

I visited the boys' school atRoldanillo, but saw nothing worthy 
of remark. I saw also a select school for girls. Select it was, 
for the number was only five. In intellectual advantages this 
was no way superior to the average of public girls' schools, if 
even so good ; but the pupils were more out of the way of learn- 
ing bad language. The teacher was the sister and housekeeper 
of Priest Elias Guerrero, the most amiable member of the clergy 
I have seen here. He is without the charge of any church. I 
could not but feel sad to think of so affectionate a brother that 
could never be a husband ; so intelligent and worthy a man ex- 
posed to the sins that are (humanly speaking) inseparable from 
forced celibacy. 

I staid a night at the house of Padre Elias. He had to say 
mass the next morning. I proposed to accompany him. He as- 
sented, only requesting me, if my conscience did not permit me 
to kneel in mass, to stand where my nonconformity could not be 
seen ; so I stood in the sacristy. The church is quite a large, 
desolate concern, not over rich in pictures and statues ; but it has 
an organ. I went up to try it. A man tried to blow it, but it 
would take two men to do it ; and you could find no two pipes 
in harmony in it ; such a shrieking, growling, squalling, and 
squealing as it made was almost diabolic. 

After breakfast Senor Guerrero went to work examining a 
peculiar book, that had been made by adding leaf after leaf of 
stamped paper to a nucleus of two or three sheets with which 
it had begun. It was a criminal trial — proceso. A man had 
been charged with some crime, and had been denounced. The 
denunciation was page 1. Page 2 stated that he was not guilty. 
Page 3 was from the juez letradro del circuito — the circuit 



CRIMINAL TEIALS. 407 

judge — ordering the judge of the first instance to take the evi- 
dence of A, B, C, and D. These made up documents 4, 5, 6, 
and 7. No. 8 was from the accused, demanding that some one 
be assigned as his counsel, as he was too poor to employ a doc- 
tor of laws. No. 9 was from the judge of the first instance, or- 
dering Reverend Elias Guerrero to defend the accused. In No. 
10 my friend had asked that B and C be re-examined on cer- 
tain points, and E and F examined; 11, 12, 13, 14 contained 
the results of these examinations, which he was sewing on pre- 
vious to passing the concretion over to the personero, or prose- 
cuting attorney of the province of Buenaventura. 

If it shall seem to the personero that the case is made up, he 
will demand, in No. 15, an interview at a proper time between 
the juez letradro, the accused, his defender, six jurors — jurados 
{sworn men) — and himself, in which these documents will all 
be read, and the case argued. We may then hope that No. 16 
will contain the vote of a majority of the jury, and No. 17 the 
sentence of the judge. 

Such is the outline of the French, Spanish, and Granadan pro- 
cess, as it seems to me. It is much more dangerous to men of 
bad character than our blessed English system, which yields a 
more perfect protection to the criminal than any other ever in- 
vented. I tried to describe our process to him, but I fear that 
he did not believe all I said. 

"In the first place, we catch the accused." 

" But if you can not catch him, what then ?" 

"Why, of course, then we do not try him." 

"Why not?" 

" He might not have a fair trial if he were not present." 

" Well, give him fair notice, then, and if he thinks it better 
to be present, let him come. Do you never catch men that you 
find you have no occasion for? And would it not have been 
better if they had been tried before sending off to a distance to 
bring them home, if they did not want to come ?" 

" That may be ; but it is contrary to our theory (founded on 
an old law-book, I believe, called Madre Vidrio — Mother Glass) 
that the man must be first caught and then tried. Next after 
catching him is to bail him." 

"But suppose he has stolen $100,000?" 



408 NEW GRANADA. 

" Then we demand security in the sum of $40,000 or less. 
Excessive bail is unconstitutional ; and a bail of as great an 
amount as he has stolen would be more than he could get, there- 
fore it would be excessive." 

" But if he gives his bail $40,000 of the stolen money, and 
then runs away ?" 

" Then the bail moves heaven and earth to have the security 
reduced to $5000, which he pays into the treasury, and gains 
$35,000 by the operation." 

" And the man who was robbed ?" 

" Why, he revenges himself by having the thief arrested 
again, if he can catch him." 

" If ?» 

" But, generally, he will not run away. The danger of con- 
viction is not so great as to justify it ; for 12 men must be unan- 
imous in his conviction, and they must walk together without 
stumbling over a path bristling with law-points planted by skill- 
ful counsel. Acquitting men has been reduced with us to a sci- 
ence. A man can make but fair wages at getting others con- 
demned, but he may even get $10,000 at a single job for getting 
a man clear." 

"Caramba!" 

"A celebrated advocate, Henry Clay, is said never once in his 
life to have failed in clearing his man, even when charged with 
murder. Consider what a fool a man would be in spending 
$40,000 in bail, and risk being caught again, when he could re- 
tain Henry Clay for one quarter of that sum, and, after being 
acquitted, live respectably among his old neighbors, and die hap- 
py in the house where he was born." 

"Verdad!" 

" But the Boston people have carried the matter farthest. 
Once Boston had a bad name for hard usage of criminals. Peo- 
ple of other states were horrified by the hanging of a man of 
good family for murder, when they could see beautiful chances 
of getting him clear that were idly suffered to pass. Since then 
they have made their jurors judges of law as well as of fact, 
and the consequence is that their juries hang on the slightest 
cause." 

" Hang the accused ?" 



GENTLENESS WITH MALEFACTOES. 409 

" No, indeed. They are unable to agree, and are discharged. 
A new trial is ordered. Not a word of the old trial will an- 
swer. All the witnesses must be heard again, and if a material 
one should die, or happen to become an engineer on a Russian 
railroad, the trial must go on without him, and the accused be 
acquitted." 

"Well, your Union must be a paradise for malefactors. I 
no longer wonder at the desperadoes that keep our isthmus in a 
perpetual terror." 

" Yes ; but I have not told you all. The denouncer is some- 
times called on to give bail as well as the denounced. For in- 
stance, a mate of a ship maltreats a sailor. Jack complains, 
and is locked up as a witness. The mate gives bail. The hot 
season comes on — hotter than in Tocaima. For fifteen long 
hours in a day the sun beats on the prison where the witness 
is shut up, but the mate is not ready for trial. He is drinking 
ice-water, and at some genteel employment on shore. After the 
trial, the witness, who has been shut up six months, is set at 
large, and the criminal is condemned to be shut up in a better 
cell six weeks." 

" Vaya ! you are joking — usted se chancea." 

" Not at all. I had my overcoat stolen, and, in a moment 
of consummate folly, I told the police. Fortunately, the thief 
never was discovered. Had he been caught, the time I should 
have been compelled to spend hanging about a court-room would 
have been worth to me more than two overcoats." 

I can not give the rest of our conversation. I own that I ut- 
terly failed to make the priest understand the superiority of our 
system to theirs : such is prejudice. The most degraded of our 
population at home can see it at once. 

Their civil suits have much more resemblance to those of the 
New Code of New York and other States than to our criminal 
processes. The demanda is handed by the plaintiff to the judge, 
and by him served on the respondent. There are three classes 
of cases, one below $16, and one above $200 ; and the lower the 
class, the more expeditious the process. 

The questions of delay must first be adjusted, and then it is 
decided whether there are facts at issue. Only in this last is 
there a delay in the decision. The evidence is taken by the 



410 NE W GEANADA. 

judge, and is secret, though each party is made acquainted with 
all applications for evidence made by the other. When the 
term of proving has expired, either party can demand publica- 
tion of proofs, and each then sees the evidence collected for the 
other. Then the parties are heard, and the judge decides the 
case. 

In cases of less than $16 there is no appeal. In sums of 
over $200 the case may go up to the supreme court of the na- 
tion, but the appeal must be based on nullity of the previous 
sentence, or notorious injustice. 

As a whole, promptness before accuracy seems to be the 
motto in their civil causes. They have a notion that a man 
might as well lose a just cause at the end of a week as gain it 
at the close of the next century, when all the parties are dead, 
and the costs have eaten up all the property of plaintiff and de- 
fendant. Our happier system prefers that a case be kept up 
till the close of the millennium rather than it be decided irrev- 
ocably wrong. 

It was at this priest's table that I learned to eat the Avocado 
pear, Alligator pear, Persea gratissima, here known as aguacate, 
and in Bogota as la curat,, feminine (but el cura, masculine, is 
the parish priest). This fruit was more difficult to master than 
any other I ever met with except the tomato. I now discov- 
ered that when I had in my mouth a piece of meat already mas- 
ticated, a particle of aguacate made a very nice sauce to it. The 
moment I began to understand it as a vegetable gravy, I had 
little difficulty ; at length I relished it with a little salt only. 
Now it is, perhaps, the only fruit that is absolutely unreplace- 
able at the North. 

Roldanillo has a cocoanut-tree too. The nuts are sold at a 
dime each at the foot of the tree. Cocoanuts would grow well 
any where in this part of the Valley of the Cauca, but they have 
never been planted. You can not expect a good supply of fruit 
in a new country, and this has not been settled much over 300 
years by the white race. 

From Roldanillo I had arranged to go to Libraida or Zarzal, 
directly across the river. I parted with the good priest with no 
little regret, and bade a final adieu to La Mona with still more. 
I had taken leave of them all, and was already at the head of 



SWIMMING THE CAUCA. 4H 

the stairs in the corrector, when the dear little monkey caught 
me by the leg, and declared that I must not go. She is an ex- 
ception to Granadan children, for there are few of them that I 
think know much what it is to love or be loved. I have met 
no other like her, and she seems rather of a Northern race. 

For some distance the road to the river has a spur of mount- 
ains on the right. A road at length turns up the river toward 
Cali, and you, as you leave it, enter the low, rich bottom-lands, 
little, if any, above high-water mark. It is now the dry season, 
but the road is not free from mud. In company with me was 
a gentleman and a dependant, who served as companion and 
servant. We had to wait for him for some time, and lost our 
way once before turning down to the ferry. 

My friend and I determined to swim the river, leaving the at- 
tendant and horses to cross by the boat. The horses swam fast- 
er than we did, and well it was for us. They had not touched 
shore when my friend was shouting for help. It was, indeed, 
quite a swim, the longest I have ever taken except in the Mis- 
sissippi. I judge it between a quarter and half a mile. It is said 
to fatigue horses more than a day's journey. If so, men can 
swim better than horses, for I felt no effects from my exertions, 
and my friend was also near the shore when the boat picked 
him up. 

To reach the solid, dry ground of the eastern banda was one 
of the worst rides I ever saw. The very bank was dry, but soon 
the road plunged into a morass, where it broke into numerous 
paths, all, however, so deep with mud as to cover a large part 
of the body of the horse. I consider the mud a more serious 
obstacle than the river ; what it would be in the wet season I 
dare not conjecture. At length it became drier ; some grass be- 
came visible in glades between the trees, and at last we reached 
the little village of Libraida. 



412 NEW GRANADA. 



CHAPTER XXVUL 



GRAZIER LIFE. 



Libraida. — Priest. — Partial Hospitality. — Impediment to Church-going. — Noon- 
day-ball. — The Priest's Partner. — Utility of Hurrahs. — Dinner. — Duek-pull- 
ing. — Beheading Cocks. — A Spring. — A Ride with Company. — La Paila. — 
Mortmain and ecclesiastical Incumbrances. — Herding. — The Lazo. — Colt- 
breaking. — Breeding of Colts and Mules. — The Bull-fishery. — Bull-driving. 

Entering Libraida, I rode at once to the house of the priest. 
I had seen him before, and often since, but this time he was away 
from home. The first time I called on him was at noon of a 
warm day, the 1st of February. I was in company with my 
friends of Tulua, Don Eladio Vargas, his wife, and her sister. 
Padre Duran is their friend, and I was indebted to them for an 
introduction. 

Introduction, strictly speaking, there was none. He saw at 
once that I was a foreigner, and I was soon informed that he was 
a priest. He brought forward aguardiente. Eladio drank, the 
ladies tasted, or pretended to, and I declined with thanks. Then 
cake, made of yuca-root, was offered to the ladies only, and they 
ate. I had seen this partiality in offering refreshments once only 
before. Next came a coal in a spoon, and a handful of cigars. 
Susana and Manuela do not smoke unless secretly ; they took 
the cigars, but declined the fire. 

At a later call there I found him teaching a boys' school, and 
at the close he went to baptize a child in the church. It is 
one of the poorest I have seen, having but two altars, and a mis- 
erable apology for a pulpit (never used, I think), and a floor of 
earth. I was about to enter, when an unsuspected obstacle pre- 
vented. I had on a pair of zamarras, and they can never cross 
the threshold of a church. I wondered at that, as it was the 
only Christian thing I had on, every thread of my clothing be- 
ing heretic, as well as the body within them. But so it was ; 
all might come in but them. Smoking in church is in violation 
of the same principle. 



DAY BALL AND FEAST. 413 

But now I find the priest at Una-gato (cat-claw), the name of 
a bush with formidable hooked spines, that thus gives its name 
to a neighborhood in this district. I unexpectedly met an ac- 
quaintance going there, and no wonder; for to-day, 29th June, is 
the day of St. Peter and St. Paul, and the Unagatefios are cel- 
ebrating the day. Our course was south, and our road lay be- 
tween the highway and the river. But it always seems as if 
you were in the highway, and that the little cleared land in sight 
of you was all that lay between the river forest and that of the 
mountains. A succession of glades and bosques, and a stream 
or two, brought us to a knoll or ridge, much nearer the river 
than ridges usually are, and perhaps not a mile from it. Here 
were two or three cabins of peasantry, and in one of them we 
found the ball. 

Just as I entered, the priest was dancing with the prettiest 
girl that I have seen in these parts. So thought others, for one 
suggested, "Viva the Cura's partner!" and in return came a 
scattering volley of vivas. Cheering simultaneously with three 
hurrahs, or three times three, is unknown here. It is a pity. I 
think a great deal of the efficiency of an Anglo-Saxon mob de- 
pends on lusty simultaneous cheering, hence we are unequaled 
in this democratic branch of our government by any nation on 
earth. A bochinche, of persons ten times more highly excited, 
has none of the deep power of a mob that has drunk plentifully, 
and feels its strength and unanimity in the thunder of three 
cheers. 

But I wander. " The Cura's partner" was dressed as a lady, 
as were five or six others. The rest of the fair sex were in ca- 
misa and enaguas only. The room was densely filled, and it 
was as an act of courtesy that I gained admission. Judge my 
surprise when I saw the pious and queenly Elodia Vaugas there. 
She is on a visit in the district. I shall not speak of the dan- 
cing, as we shall see it again, and more at leisure. 

Soon we were notified that dinner was ready. We moved 
to another house. Under the piazza of this, a narrow, long ta- 
ble had been set, so that the ladies, sitting next the house on a 
barbacoa, or immovable bench of guadua, were in the shade, 
while we of the tougher sex sat under a vertical sun, but little 
incommoded with the heat. We had an awkward dinner. The 



414 NEW GEANADA. 

meats were abundant, the plates sufficient, but the sum of the 
knives, spoons, and forks exceeded the guests at the table by 
but one or two. The ladies refused to eat with their fingers. 
To me had fallen both a knife and a fork. Where much is given 
much is required. I spent the whole dinner cutting meat into 
mouthfuls, of which few indeed fell to my own share. 

A second table was filled with musicians, and some second- 
rate characters, while the mass of the festive crowd either fast- 
ed or ate at the kitchen. What we call music consisted essen- 
tially of two drums and a clarinet. They played while we ate. 
While they ate we sat in the house, and I tried to make con- 
versation with the pretty lady, but with indifferent success. 

Now the priest, who seems to be Master of Kevels ex officio, 
calls out, " Bring the cock and dig the pot." A hole was dug 
in the turf, and an unfortunate cock interred therein up to his 
ears. But the hole is too shallow ; he rises up with the earth 
on his shoulders, and the hole must be dug deeper. Even at 
last he was kept in by wedging the turf about him, so that he 
could not get up. Meanwhile, a still more unfortunate Mus- 
covy duck was suspended by his feet over one of those deep cuts 
common in these roads. The mode of suspension was very im- 
perfect : two poles of guadua set in the ground had a strong 
hide rope — guasca — passed over their tops, and poor Muscovy 
was fastened in the middle : the two poles were steadied by 
two men. The ladies came out and seated themselves on the 
bank to witness the sport. The men on horseback passed un- 
der the duck at full speed, and endeavored to wrench off its head. 
I left them to their amusement a little while, and on my return 
the duck was dead. Every attempt to pull off the head only 
filled the hands with blood and feathers, and the invincible duck 
was left for the cock. 

According to the rules, a lady was to be blindfolded, to take 
a machete, and, if possible, cut off the poor bird's head in three 
blows. The curate, who seemed to take this diversion under 
his special patronage, selected for executioner the most respect- 
able and pious young lady of the company, our queenly Elodia. 
With much reluctance she consented to be blindfolded, took the 
machete, went one step toward the cock, stopped, and removed 
the handkerchief. The curate's partner in the last waltz was 



BEHEADING THE COCK. 415 

next applied to with much urgency, but resisted. Finally, it 
was voted to blindfold a man. No sooner had he begun to step 
than all called out, " You are going wrong ! More to the right ! 
More to the left ! Strike where you are ! Go two steps 
farther!" And all this at once, and twenty times repeated. 
Confounded by this " advice gratis," he gave three sweeping 
strokes wide of the mark. " There goes his head !" cry half a 
dozen, and the executioner removes his bandage amid shouts of 
derision, and sees the cock's head projecting unharmed between 
his feet. A second followed ; but my curiosity was gratified, or, 
rather, my endurance exhausted, and I left the ground in search 
of plants. As I mounted my horse to return, the remains of 
the second cock were passed over the fence to the kitchen. 

The priest, the ladies, and several gentlemen returned at the 
same time to Libraida. There had been another decollation, 
and another party larger than ours was already on horseback. 
We commenced riding round among the diluvial hills that diver- 
sify the uninclosed ground around the village, shouting " Viva 
San Pedro !" The priest called out to me that I did not shout. 
Thus appealed to, I ventured, in English, one good " Hurrah 
for Saint Peter !" which drew a roar of merriment from the com- 
pany. Soon after we halted at a sort of tavern, where the priest 
had arranged to treat the company to milk punch. 

A little northeast of the town is a spring, just west of the road 
that comes in from Cartago. It furnishes water to the village, 
which, unlike all others, is not on a stream. I really know of 
no other spring in all the valley of the Cauca. In dry seasons 
the streams diminish as they come down from the mountains, 
and in rainy times all their accessions are from superficial wa- 
ter. I have no reason to doubt but that wells would yield wa- 
ter were they dug, but at present there is no need of any. 

I took a peep at the prison here only because some of my 
young Conservador friends were shut up there in 1851, when just 
too old to be whipped by their mothers, for taking up arms 
against the government. 

A little before 5 I left for the Hacienda of La Paila. As 
the gentlefolks could not think of leaving without dancing all 
night, I contented myself with the guidance and company of one 
or two wearers of camisa and enaguas that could not conven- 



416 NEW GEANADA. 

iently be away from home till morning. The road is a little dif- 
ficult to find, from the fact that Libraida does not stand on the 
real highway, but west of it, and it was some miles before we 
seemed to have got fairly into it. The open ground, or mixture 
of glade and bosque is not continuous, but in many places the 
forest of the mountain unites with that of the river. In these 
spots a place for a road was anciently cleared, a dozen rods wide, 
and it is now grown up to grass, and will never bear another 
tree. But the road does not at this day always follow these 
openings, which may lead you upon an impassable morass, or 
a river with no road down the bank. Villages are just as like- 
ly to be built off the former road, like Libraida, as on it. The 
travel leaves the theoretical road and makes ways for itself. As 
no labor is expended on the road, and the land is not fenced, no 
man knows what precise spot is the legal property of the nation 
as highway. 

We found some mud. Here I noticed a large, beautiful or- 
chid flower growing very frequently on trees. It was white and 
pink. It is here called lily — azucena — and is a Cattleya. 
Strangely enough, I found on knolls here a terrestrial orchid, 
with a stem seven feet high, of a totally different section of the 
Order, but with a flower so like this Cattleya in size, shape, 
and color, that, remove the tip of the column from a flower, and 
I could not tell from which plant it had been taken, while the 
pollen, leaves, and whole habit of the plants were as different as 
possible. The terrestrial plant was Sobralia. This shows that 
the pollen of orchids furnishes a prime characteristic. 

At Las Canas River I found the guadua in flower. It is 
strange that a plant so common should flower so rarely. Mu- 
tis, who spent his life on the botany of the country, never found 
it. Caldas found it once or twice. I can not learn that any 
other botanist has found it but myself. I gathered a large quan- 
tity. Rio de Las Caiias is almost always fordable. It is apt 
to keep about a foot deep — say a good mill-stream. 

Farther on I came among low hills, and in half a mile farther 
found a tree Passifiora. It was a slender tree, but I had to 
stand erect on my horse to cut off the lowest limb. I afterward 
found another species that is a bush, and there may be yet other 
passion-flowers that are not vines. 



GUADUA BRIDGE. 417 

This hilly land lasted more than a mile, and then came an 
open plain, of which we skirted the eastern edge. It is called 
El Medio. We shall return to it presently. Again we come to 
a piece of woods, at the farther edge of which flows the largest 
stream we have passed since leaving Cartago. It is Rio de la 
Paila. A slender bridge of guadua has since been thrown over 
it for footmen. With some little risk, I crossed diagonally up 
stream. Horses do not swim much with their riders here. 

A guadua bridge is best built where a large tree has limbs 
overhanging the stream. The butts of many large, long, slender 
guaduas, laid side by side, are secured to either shore with the 
stems reaching upward over the river. Others are, if necessary, 
spliced upon these, till the tops of the opposite sets can be bent 
down and interwoven into an arch, which the architect may im- 
itate with advantage. Of course, the centre is much narrower 
and thinner than the ends, because the guaduas taper upward. 
A floor of transverse slats of guadua is tied upon the arch, a 
railing may be added, and the structure made firmer by vines, 
which tie the bridge to the branches above. Thus the whole 
bridge is nothing but grass stems tied together by woody vines 
— bejucos. The structure requires neither auger, chisel, saw, 
nor nail. 

Beyond the river the road bears to the west, to avoid some 
very high hills. We proceeded to the base of the first of these, 
and found ourselves at the ancient Hacienda de la Paila. The 
chief attraction to me is the mistress of it. I had met the Se- 
nora Emilia (pronounced Amelia) at Chaqueral. She is, I be- 
lieve, some relative of Dona Paz, if not, in fact, a sister. I rec- 
ollect that at the time I met also another lady of mature age 
there, and we were conversing about the wives and families of 
clergymen in the United States. None of them could conceive 
how a clergyman could induce a reputable lady to marry him. 
Indeed, they hardly thought it decent to defend the idea of a 
married clergy. I spoke of the Cura of Banco, who has several 
children born every year, and asked them whether it would not 
be better that he should be permitted to have one good, decent 
wife, and a family that should be a model of what a family ought 
to be. The stranger lady would prefer the Cura of Banco as 
he is ; for his sacraments are efficacious now, wicked as he is, 

Dd 



418 NEW GRANADA. 

whereas, if married, those who trusted to them would be lost. 
Senora Emilia thought somewhat differently, and some things 
she said raised her at once to a high place in my esteem. 

Emilia Barriga has been married twice. When Emilia Bar- 
riga de Sanmartin, she bore two children, Jose Sanmartin (Bar- 
riga), or Chepe, and Jose Maria, called, for shortness, Pepe. She 
then married Mr. Modest Slack — Don Modesto Flojo — and had 
a lot of daughters — six, I believe — and has now an infant son. 
Sanmartin owned, or rather held, the Hacienda of La Paila, of 
which more anon. Senor Flojo and the younger children have 
not much property. But little difference is seen between them. 
They are all smart and quite amiable children, and the oldest 
Sanmartin is not yet sixteen. 

The hacienda extends from Las Canas River to the Biver 
Murillo, which formerly bounded the provinces of Antioquia 
and Popayan. The width there is seven miles. The length, 
from the Cauca to the summit of the Quindio, may be 30 miles, 
and the whole can not contain less than 500 square miles, and 
may well be a thousand. During the good old regime of tyr- 
anny, when prosperity was the lot of the rich, and unrequited 
labor that of the poor, the hacienda is said to have boasted 
36,000 cows and 800 mares ; now the mares are greatly re- 
duced in number, and the cows can not be a tithe of what they 
were. Two hundred years ago a dying Sanmartin bequeathed 
this property to the souls in Purgatory, and, until lately, it has 
been in dead hands, "manos muertas," from which, I suppose, 
comes the French word mortmain. It was fixed that the stew- 
ardship of the land should descend, on nearly the same princi- 
ples that a crown does, from his eldest son downward. None 
of his descendants, as a steward — mayordomo — had power to 
sell or divide. Nor was it a mere honor. The estate was to 
yield so many masses per annum at $1 60 each, and all that the 
property yielded over this was the steward's. This excess of 
revenue became at length so great, that the stipulated sum to 
go for masses came to be considered as a sort of tax, and the 
steward as the owner, subject only to this irrevocable annual 
payment. 

This arrangement was designed to keep this estate, as large 
as a county, perpetually undivided and in the hands of one 



MOETMAIN AND CAPELLANIAS. 419 

man. Republicanism might protest against the arrangement, 
but it would be sacrilege to change it. 

But I have not told all. A previous Sanmartin, the grand- 
father of him that deeded this domain to the use of the toasted 
inmates of Purgatory and for the benefit of the priests, pledged 
it and incumbered it with ten masses a year for the same be- 
nevolent object. The person who was to receive the $16 per 
annum was the capellan, and the incumbrance was a capellania. 
These words have the same basis as chaplain and chaplaincy, 
but the meaning is quite different. If the capellan has too many 
masses to say, he may hire another to say them, and if he can 
hire them for less than $16, he may put the balance in his pock- 
et. Nay, the capellan need not be a priest, and a capellania is 
a piece of property as well as a stewardship. And the Sanmar- 
tin who originated the mayorazgo, as the right of stewardship is 
called, settled on his other son a capellania of $160, which has 
come somehow into the hands of my friend Ramon Gonzalez. 

Land that is charged with a capellania can not be sold, even 
if not in dead hands, without the consent of the capellan. Many 
estates have in this way been incumbered with six capellanias, 
and a division, or even a sale of it, becomes almost impossible. 
Is there no remedy ? Did the Sanmartines of the 17th century 
exceed their rights in thus fixing impediments to the alienation 
or division of the property by their heirs ? Much can be said 
on both sides, and I suppose much has been said in some law- 
books that I never shall read. I am inclined, for one, to think 
the work should be undone in some way, that society may not 
be blocked up till the end of time by a superstitious provision 
in a will of the 17th century. 

So, too, thinks the democratic — ultra-democratic — govern- 
ment of New Granada. Hence the law for abolishing mayor- 
azgos, and the law for redeeming capellanias and other perpet- 
ual charges — censos they are called. Cursed laws they are; 
cursed by the pope, cursed by the archbishop, cursed by the 
bishops and other clergy, cursed by fanatical old women of both 
sexes and all ages that believe that Christ gave this fair coun- 
try to Peter, Peter to the pope, and the pope to the archbishop 
and bishops of New Granada, and that man was made for the 
Church, and not the Church for man. 



420 NEW GEANADA. 

This bold step, denounced by Pius IX. in his allocution of 
27th September, 1852, was taken by the Lopez administration. 
It was the offspring of republican ideas, and of necessity, and 
would meet my full approbation had it no other application. 
New mayorazgos had long since been prohibited, and now all 
existing ones were cut off at a blow. All censos can be trans- 
ferred from a piece of real estate to government by paying to the 
treasury eight times its annual product. All this estate, then, 
must belong to Chepe Sanmartin, who was steward of it, though 
a minor of twelve years of age when this law made him owner. 
Were the capellanias redeemed, it would be held under no other 
limitations than ordinary real estate of minor heirs. 

But I am assured that the law has abounded in mischievous 
results. Hospitals and schools must share the fate of nunneries 
and collections of greasy monks, for all are called pious founda- 
tions. Perpetual ground-rents ought to be redeemable in some 
way, and if no other could be found, in this ; but it is asserted 
that ordinary loans of money on bond and mortgage are thus 
convertible into demands on a bankrupt national treasury. This, 
if true, is infamous indeed. 

I beg the learned not to laugh at, nor the unlearned to under- 
value, my essay on tenures. It has cost me immense study, 
and even as I write it is with a feeling of uncertainty as to some 
of the facts. Doubtless there are in Blackstone law-terms that 
I might have introduced had I known them ; but I have written 
this for American laymen, as the lawyers call us, the uninitiated. 

It was not unintentionally that I coined the surname Flojo 
{slack) for Don Modesto, the second husband of Emilia Barriga. 
Perhaps, in this land of slackness, a slacker man lives not. Hence 
the estate is all run down, the cows run wild, the tenants run 
lawless, and, but for two circumstances, the family would have 
run to ruin. A special love for a big saddle-bottle, which he has 
affectionately named La Pechona (the full-breasted), and which 
he loves to suck a little too well, and a general love for dogs, 
hunting, and idleness, seem the most striking characteristics of 
the man whom the good Emilia made the stepfather of Chepe 
and Pepe. 

The two things that saved the family from ruin are, first, the 
energy of Emilia herself, and that of a young cousin of hers, a 



FOEGIVENESS OF SIN. 421 

decided character. Damian Caicedo, LL.D., is of mixed Iblood 
and low origin. At 16 he could not read his mother tongue. A 
fortunate accident disabled him for severe physical labor, and he 
at once began an education that he completed amid every kind 
of self-denial and privation. He is just taking hold of the af- 
fairs of his slack relative, and, if I mistake not, will yet make his 
own fortune in mending those of his friends. 

I could not expect all the conveniences that I might desire 
in this family, but there were other things to make amends for 
all deficiencies. I enjoyed myself; I taught the children — an 
agreeable task for me. And for the Lady Emilia herself I have 
a real esteem; if Jbut one of my Catholic acquaintances should 
get to heaven, I thmkjit^wjlljbeshe. * s 

" If you were only a Christian," she said to me one day, " I 
think you would be most like a saint of any man I ever saw." 

" Were I a ' Christian,' instead of a heretic as I am, I should 
be like other Christians, for it is their religion that makes them 
what they are." 

" No, it is not. Those who are wicked among us sin in de- 
fiance of the teachings of the Church. And all need forgiveness, 
but it can come to none except in the way God has appointed." 

" But he did not enjoin that the intervention of a fellow-sin- 
ner is necessary to make the pardon of God available." 

" And how dare you deny it ?" 

" Listen, for it is a fact that I am going to tell you. When 
I was a little boy of six, like your little Sara, I gained access 
to my mother's sugar-jar, and carried off a lump as large as a 
lime. After I had eaten it, my conscience smote me. I did 
not fear detection, but the anger of God. So I went off behind 
a knoll, and kneeled down in a large hole, where a rock had 
been dug out of the ground, and confessed my sin to God, and 
prayed for forgiveness. Do you think that God forgave me ?" 

"Ah! you ought to talk with a priest, and not with an igno- 
rant woman like me." 

She wants my little Testament very much, and I am sorry 
I can not spare it. But my Bible is too heavy to carry with 
me when I leave my trunks, and I must deny her. [I mailed it 
to her from Cartagena. The postage was five cents, because its 
weight exceeded four ounces.] 



422 NEW GRANADA. 

Damian's sister came here on a visit while I was here, and 
with her came a mulatto lady to teach the children. There is 
nothing interesting about either. The females eat at the table 
after we leave it. I have managed to eat with them once or 
twice, but they prefer that I should be at the first table. 

The house, as usual, contains no inner doors, though there 
may be said to be two rooms and a passage. Two beds are 
located in the passage, and the inner room, that serves us much 
for sitting-room and study by day, is the principal dormitory at 
night. My hammock requires more space. I attach one cord 
to the roof in the inner room, and the other passes out at the 
top of the outer door, and is fastened to a post of the piazza ; 
so I occupy the whole house, though bodily I sleep alone in 
the outer room, -or sala. 

The children's beds were mere rugs to lie on, and a blanket 
apiece to wrap themselves in like a cocoon. The motherly 
Clementina, the oldest girl, wound up the little boy with her. 
Of course, they denude themselves utterly before wrapping up. 
I had the impudence to ask the children if the young ladies did 
the same, and they said yes. 

I can not pretend to conjecture the number of houses on the 
estate. They are scattered from the road to the river, but there 
are none far east of the road. A line of houses skirts that large 
plain north of the La Paila called the Medio. The inhabitants 
there are mostly white. There is a group on the south bank of 
the river, half a mile below the ford ; the inhabitants of these 
have a good deal of negro blood in their veins. On the south 
end of the road, across the estate, there are no houses. These 
families of herdsmen, of every color, have been a great study 
for me. 

The chief exports of this tract are young bulls, young horses, 
and hogs. The latter are raised by the inhabitants of the river 
forest, the others by the family. Some of the tenants owe per- 
sonal service for rent. This is generally rendered on Friday 
and Saturday, and most of it performed on horseback. The 
others pay a ground-rent of from $1 60 to $3 20 per annum. 
All have their estancias, or fields, in the forest. They contain 
from half an acre to two acres, inclosed by an elliptical or cir- 
cular fence of split guaduas. Those who live in the open land 



HACIENDA DE LA PAILA. 423 

have often quite a distance to go to their fields, hut, as they 
work only occasionally, it makes little difference. 

Cacao-orchards — cacaguales — are also found in the forest, but 
they are not numerous. People have hardly forethought enough 
to plant any thing that will be so slow in yielding returns. The 
platanal yields ripe fruit in about a year, and may be kept up 
indefinitely ; but when the fence is thoroughly rotted down, they 
prefer beginning in a new place. In all the dry forest toward 
the river, these inclosures are scattered within short distances 
of each other, like plums in a pudding. Sometimes two adjoin 
each other ; others almost touch or lie in sight of each other. 
Cane is also raised, but in small quantities, only for horse-feed, 
aguardiente, sirup, and a very little panela. 

A few bags are made from cabuya, and one man braids jipi- 
japa hats ; but nothing probably is made and sold off the ha- 
cienda, and all articles of clothing are imported, not excepting 
alpargates even. 

But the grazing interest demands our more particular notice. 
I will attempt its description, premising that the estate contains 
three distinct herds of mares and three of cows, in three pastures 
or ranges — the Medio, the Central, and the Guavito. The cen- 
tral pasture is separated from the Medio by the La Paila, and 
from Guavito only by broken ground running from the eastern 
forest to the western. I will describe the rodeo, or herding, of 
a Friday at Guavito, the larger of the three pastures. 

On Friday morning an unusual sound strikes my ear on 
awaking. It is the step of many horses approaching the corral, 
or inclosure, near the house. All hands must have been on the 
move for some time, for they are mounted, driving in the horses 
of the central pasture. One object of this muster is to catch 
animals for the grand campaign of the day at Guavito. 

We will not go down to this, but, while breakfast is prepar- 
ing, let us examine the horses we are to mount immediately aft- 
er. The horses themselves are the most obedient and well-brok- 
en I have ever seen. The slightest intimation of the bridle will 
guide them. They will patiently gratify your whim of flower- 
gathering, even at the expense of running their head into a thorn- 
bush. You may stand on the back of many of them, leaving 
the reins at your feet, or, throwing the reins over the high pom- 



424 NEW GRANADA. 

mel of the saddle, leave them for some time. Their gait is gen- 
erally very easy. They are not large, nor is much regard had 
to parentage. 

The "bridle was made here. They would not like to trust to 
a hit made abroad. The Caucan bit is a formidable affair. The 
reins are attached to one end of a lever of the first kind ; the 
fulcrum is in the horse's mouth, against the lower jaw, and far 
back the other end of the lever is ready to press against the pal- 
ate, and force open the mouth. If he attempt to hinder this 
operation by holding fast the apparatus with his teeth, they only 
seize upon two hollow cylinders, within which the bit plays free- 
ly. One stout chain passes within the mouth, near the fulcrum ; 
another, under the jaw, counteracts this, and, as the mouth is 
forced upon, they gripe the jaw beyond endurance. Still a third 
chain unites the points to which the reins are attached. The 
reins and headstall are of raw-hide, twisted or braided, accord- 
ing as fancy or economy dictates. The reins would resist a 
strain of half a ton. A broad piece, often ornamented, passes 
across the forehead, which may be slipped down over the eyes 
if you wish to leave the horse without hitching. Finally, the 
reins, after uniting at a point convenient for the hand, separate 
again into two long thongs, which may be used to tie the horse, 
or as a whip. 

The saddle is a study for an anatomist. The cojinetes are a 
cover over the whole, made of a leather resembling buckskin. 
It is often padded and embroidered with silk. It has two huge 
pockets, each capable of containing a pair of shoes, or $200 in 
silver. Removing the cojinetes, we come to a surface of hard 
leather— r-the coraza. This takes off: under it you see three straps 
of raw-hide passing over the saddle in three distinct directions, 
and uniting in a ring on each side. The girth consists of twisted 
raw-hide, passing several times from the ring on the off side to 
another ring. It is adjusted by passing a thong four times be- 
tween this last ring and the one on the near side. This thong 
is drawn tight enough, and tied in a peculiar knot. Under the 
girth-straps is yet a third cover, which takes off, and leaves the 
saddle a skeleton of wood and iron, padded on the under side. 
Across the middle of this skeleton — saddle-tree (fuste) — passes a 
strong strap, fastened in the centre by a string of leather passing 



SADDLE AND BRIDLE. 425 

many times through the strap and the saddle-tree, sewing them 
together. Both ends of the strap are pierced with holes to buck- 
le on the stirrups. The stirrup-leathers are imported. The 
best stirrups are the slipper-form of brass or wood : common 
stirrups (de aro) are used, or even a stick of wood supported by 
two strings. The crupper is like ours ; but, besides this, the va- 
quero's saddle should have an arretranca to enable the horse to 
hold back without straining the girth. Beneath the saddle, and 
to protect it and the horse, is placed a sudadero : it is a mat of 
rushes, a rug, or, at worst, an old sack folded. It would have 
saved me some labor had I been told by my books that in New 
Granada a high-pommeled saddle and an arm-chair are silla ; a 
low-pommeled saddle, a side-saddle, and a fresh-water turtle are 
gala/pago ; a common chair, taburete ; easy-chair, jpoltrona ; ot- 
toman and stool, cojin ; sofa, sofa ; lounge without a back, can- 
ape ; bench with a back, escano ; bench without a back, banco. 
Saddle, bridle, sudadero, stirrups, and halter (jaquima), constitute 
a monlura. A traveler here ought always to own his montura, 
and watch it well. Horses, cows, and goats will eat his suda- 
dero, and dogs will eat all the rest but the tanned leather, wood, 
and iron ; of these last, including the contents of the cojinetes, 
the peons will rob him ; his clothes are victimized by the wash- 
women, and his skin by musquitoes, fleas, and niguas. Happy is 
he if he can save his bones and his conscience (particularly the 
latter) undamaged, and, leaving his cash and much of his flesh, 
return to his native land with his credit and his constitution. 

But where am I running to ? In the first place, breakfast is 
ready ; secondly, I have no right to complain, for my belt is too 
small for me ; only the more respectable insects have drunk 
my blood, and I have found the rogues fewer and smaller here 
than at home. But to horse ! to horse ! 

Off with your slippers ; put on a pair of alpargates, and draw 
on a pair of zamarras ; buckle the huge spurs securely to your 
heels ; take your guasca (rope of hide, with lazo or noose at the 
end) ; tie it under the right flap of your saddle, with a peculiar 
knot which Pepe will show you ; tie your halter in the same 
way on this side, and mount. You will find vaqueros worse 
mounted, without cojinetes or halter, without zamarras or al- 
pargates, the spur fastened to the naked heel, and the panta- 



426 



NEW GEANADA. 



loons rolled up to keep them from the mud. More than one 

you will see with noth- 
ing on but hat, ruana, 
pants, and spurs ; their 
feet stuck into stirrups 
carved out of wood, or 
merely resting on a hit 
of wood suspended from 
the saddle Tby a forked 
thong. 

As we approach the 
corral of Guavito, the 
' ' mares" (for they speak 
only of them in the pas- 
tures) are driven in be- 
fore us. Other vaque- 
ros come in from below, 
bringing with them the 
mares from that direc- 
tion. They enter the 
corral together, their 
feet pattering on the 
ground like rain on a 
roof. The corral has 
an inner yard, to which the mares run directly. A man on horse- 
back guards the entrance. Others are not mounted to their 
mind, and proceed to catch fresh horses. 

This is generally done on foot. The 
vaquero takes the guasca coiled up in 
his left hand, and the lazo (noose) in the 
right. The running knot (llave — key) 
is not at his hand, but at a third of a 
circle from it, when the lazo is opened 
out into a circle, as in the adjoining dia- 
gram, where the longer diameter of the 
ellipse should be regarded as four feet, 
and not estimated from the size of the 
hand. He has it already in his hand, 
has singled out the animal he will catch, 




THE VAQUERO. 




CATCHING A HORSE. 427 

and is waiting a moving of the herd. The instant he finds hia 
prey approaching, he commences whirling the lazo round his 
head in such a way as to keep the noose spread until the pro- 
pitious moment comes to let go. He then pays out the guasca 
with the left hand, letting it run through the right till the time 
to hold it fast. 

I think the idea we have of skill in the use of the lazo is ex- 
aggerated. Even in the corral it is well to catch five horses at 
ten throws. One assured me that 100 throws would catch 80 
or 90 horses. The next six throws caught but one. Still, the 
noose and the lash, the bow and the gun, are the four instru- 
ments by which man holds his title to rule over the animal 
world. 

The moment a broken horse finds his head is your aim, he 
tries to mingle it with others, and holds it particularly near the 
fence. As you approach he at length starts and runs with all 
his might fpr the other side of the corral. You throw the noose 
as he is going from you. The moment it touches his neck he 
stops short. He is as tame as a girl caught in blind-man's-buff. 
A colt, on the other hand, when he finds you are aiming at him, 
is wrought to desperation. When caught, he runs and chokes 
himself in the noose ; he flounces and throws himself on the 
ground, but all in vain. The hand of man, ever a terror to him, 
must approach his throat before his stertorous breathing, like 
that of a man in a fit, can be relieved. 

The horses are shut in with bars — trancas — of guadua, and 
we sally forth in long procession for cows. The tame band are 
near in the open plain. With a long circuit we get ready to 
slip between them and the forest. "Examine girths," says 
Cristobal, who has command. Every head is bent down. Some 
dismount. " All ready!" The head of the column dashes for- 
ward at a gallop, and soon a line of some 30 horsemen, at dis- 
tances from 3 to 10 rods apart, extends between the herd and 
their wonted refuge. We advance, and the cows, with a gener- 
al lowing, proceed peaceably but rapidly in the desired direction. 

Suddenly a cow, with head erect, and tail horizontal and rig- 
id, breaks our line at full gallop for the thicket. Two horse- 
men start in pursuit, and she soon finds a noose about her head. 
When she has run the length the guasca permits, her head can 



428 NEW GEANADA. 

go no farther, and her body is unwilling to stop. She falls, 
and is not disposed to rise. One vaquero approaches, care- 
fully keeping out of the circle of which the tightened guasca is 
the radius and his companion the centre. Whirling the end of 
his own guasca round and round suddenly, he brings it down 
like a slung-shot upon the poor rebel, and she starts to her feet. 
Still she will not move one step. He raises his foot, and drags 
his cruel spur along her back. She darts forward, and the 
horse of her leader, the moment he feels the guasca slacken, 
starts on, keeping one eye upon the movements of the cow. 
After zigzagging and floundering a while, she waxes wroth, and 
assumes the aggressive upon her leader. Now she finds the oth- 
er lazo about her horns, and each horseman keeps her from 
reaching the other. I have heard of a cow becoming so enraged 
as to drop down dead on the spot. Bulls are never so utterly 
furious. 

Meanwhile, the herd, lowing and running, enter the corral, and 
move round and round like a whirlpool filled with horns. Last 
comes the captive ; but how shall we liberate her? He that takes 
a wolf by the ears should always consider first how he will fare 
when he quits his hold. To loose a cow takes more time than 
to catch her. A third man throws his noose so that it lays part- 
ly on her back and partly on the ground behind her. If she 
does not move of her own accord, he catches her by the tail and 
pulls. Either in yielding or resisting, she steps both feet over 
the guasca. It might then be drawn tight around the middle of 
her body. Instead of this, it is slipped off behind, and tight- 
ened about her heels, which are pulled back, and, with a slight 
push or pull, she falls. She is now helpless. I have seen a 
horse drag a cow in this manner by the heels into or out of a 
yard. Her head is safely approached, the lazos removed from 
it, and the horseman remounts. The slackened guasca permits 
her to bring her feet forward, and in separating them she opens 
the lazo. She springs upon her feet, reflects a second, makes a 
dash at a horseman, who eludes her. Shaking her horns, as if 
blaspheming in her heart, she runs off to the herd, who are thus 
taught that the way of transgressors is hard. 

The outer corral has two entrances : a horseman is stationed 
at one, and a ruana on a stake at the other, and we start off for 



COW-HERDING. 429 

the wilder herd. Our way is riverward, over beautiful valley 
land, sprinkled with clumps of trees and thorny bushes of aca- 
cia. Silence! We steal along at a walk, curving our course 
around an unseen centre* Now Cristobal starts forward at a 
gallop, with his head bent down to the horse's mane. We fol- 
low, and the herd find us shouting between them and their ref- 
uge. A few desperadoes plunge with a crash into the thorny 
thicket behind us, the rest gallop in the opposite direction. A 
bushy ravine extends across our course near the corral. Instead 
of crossing it, almost the whole herd pass our ranks, and disap- 
pear toward the river — all but now and then one arrested by the 
lazo in her flight. Those who have not thus caught a prize beat 
the bushes, dislodge an animal, and catch him as he runs. In 
this way we secure at least a delegation from the wild herd ; 
we will hope to do better next time. 

Now begins the business of the day. What calf has not his 
ear-mark? What youngster of two months has not his little 
brand on his cheek ? What yearling not branded for life on 
his side ? A lazo on his head, another on his heels. A fire is 
burning by the division fence, and the irons are hot. Here is a 
calf with a sack of morbid growth. A spatula of wood is whit- 
tled out with a machete; fifty maggots of all sizes are dislodged 
from the cavity, and it is filled with the first dry, soft, absorb- 
ent substance at hand. 

A young bull is caught who is not to be trifled with. The 
guasca is thrown over a forked post — horca — and in vain he 
tries to approach his captor ; every movement brings him near- 
er the fatal fork till his head touches it. His heels are secured 
as before. Look out for him when he is let loose! But in five 
months' constant exposure, I have known but one horse gored 
by a bull. The cows are at length released, and rush lowing 
from the corral. 

Now comes the turn of the horses. They are subject to many 
more infirmities than the cows, are of more value per head, and, 
besides, are to be trained. Hence they are reviewed much oft- 
ener and more carefully. Owing to this, they are not so wild. 

This life would not be without its perils were not the va- 
quero so tough. He is riding at full gallop, and his horse puts 
his foot into a deep hole covered with grass. He comes to the 



430 NEW GRANADA. - 

ground as from a rail-car. He picks up his guasca, and, if his 
cow has not got clear, off he starts again in the chase. His 
girth breaks when he has a hull tied to the pommel of his sad- 
dle. He manages to escape unharmed. I have known but one 
serious accident, the dislocation of a shoulder-joint. 

Both horse and rider enjoy the sport highly. It is severe 
sport for the horse, who will injure himself before showing any 
sign of flagging. 

A curious scene closes the rodeo. A vaquero catches a wild 
colt which he is to break. He manages, amid his struggles, to 
exchange the guasca for a halter, and binds the infuriate young- 
ster securely to the tail of his horse, who goes homeward from 
the corral with the meek resignation of a deacon who has a dis- 
sipated son. 

I have not seen the process of breaking. The young repro- 
bate, unlike his biped prototype, grows more and more tracta- 
ble, and at length leads submissively. He is then led in the 
same way when mounted, and feeling that his head is not his 
own, he does not try to defend his right to his back. The 
horse with which the colt is placed in such intimate relations is 
called his godfather — padrino. Beating and brutality are no 
part of the system. 

The gait of the pupil is carefully attended to. In some cases 
the fore foot (hand) is tied to the corresponding hind foot by a 
cord shorter than the natural step would render agreeable. In 
other cases the feet are loaded with bags of sand or shot to make 
him raise them better. He is made to walk round in circles of 
small radius, or in double circles like a figure 8. Trotting is 
not in request, as there are no carriage-horses. 

The father of colts is a polygamist. He has his family — ata- 
jada — under so much subjection as to keep them from mingling 
with those of his neighbors. When they have all been mingled 
up in the recojida, as the assemblage in the corral is called, as 
they go forth he calls them about him, and, if any one shows a 
disposition to straggle, he goes after her, and administers as 
much correction as the case demands with his teeth. The pa- 
drotes seldom fight with each other, though I can not imagine 
that they have come to their present good understanding with- 
out some boxing in days past. I saw, indeed, but one horse- 



BKEEDING COLTS AND MULES. 431 

fight, and the originator of that was a traveler's horse, that had 
got out into the pasture, and was ignorant or regardless of the 
compacts, truces, and treaties then and there in force. 

Individually, these animals are by no means so respectable as 
they ought to be in a grazing community. More than half of 
them could be bought at $25 each, and one good Northern horse 
would buy forty of them. But scientific breeding would require 
more care than any man here is disposed to bestow. These an- 
imals are not exempt from the menial service of the saddle, and, 
with one temporary exception, I have found them as manage- 
able as any other. Ladies ride them through herds of horses 
without inconvenience. 

A gentleman once told me that he was an ounce of gold rich- 
er that morning than he expected, and asked me, as a Yankee, 
to guess how. I told him that a mare, from which he had ex- 
pected a colt, had given him a mule. I was right. The value 
attached to this hybrid race encourages the disgusting practice 
of breeding them, which was forbidden under the Mosaic dispen- 
sation. The ass is a privileged animal on the plantation. A 
blow inflicted on his sleek hide would be felt keenly by his own- 
er. He goes where he pleases. When he comes to the house, 
he walks through the dining-room toward the kitchen to see if 
there is any corn or salt for him. If there is, he has it without 
stint. There are two of them at La Paila. With a meek and 
placid countenance, they go about from pasture to pasture, and 
you meet one of them now at the Medio and now at Guavito. 
They are friends ; and I knew them once to perform a duet in 
the very dining-room, as they were returning from a regale at 
the kitchen door. Think of that, ye dilettanti ! who magnify a 
feline serenade in open air, under your closed windows, to the 
event of the night. What would you say of two asses trumpet- 
ing at once in the house ? 

To forward the views of these priests, as I loved to call them, 
to the scandal of the faithful and amusement of the irreverent, 
some of the heads of families — padrotes — are subjected to a 
cruel operation. An incision is made in the urethra, that cuts 
off all hope of progeny. The victim is called a retajado. It is 
remarkable that the asses keep on friendly terms with these un- 
fortunates, while with others they have furious battles. From 



432 NEW GKANADA. 

some such encounter one of our meek friars came out with an 
injured ear, which will never revolve again "with motion dull 
upon the pivot of his skull," but this particular "long left ear" 
must hang down forever from the effects of a padrote's teeth. 

One night, at dusk, I was delighted to see Don Ramon Gon- 
zalez ride up, accompanied with three men, who slept all night 
in the corredor. Early next morning, they and all the dispos- 
able force about the house disappeared on horseback. Before 
breakfast they came in, one by one and two by two, each arrival 
accompanied by a young bull. Some men were so strongly 
mounted, and their captive so tractable {tractable is from traho, 
to draw), that one horseman alone could draw in a bull. Gen- 
erally, it needed a second man to add propulsion to the attrac- 
tion of the first. In the case of the furious and indignant, a 
second guasca was requisite to secure the captor from the as- 
sault of his prize. All these couplets and triplets tended to- 
ward the central corral, where half a dozen prisoners were stalk- 
ing about in ill humor while we breakfasted. 

As we came out from breakfast the vaqueros were assembled 
in full force. Dinner was deferred, and the bull-fishery was 
continued till dark. Some evil-minded fellows rendered the or- 
dinary mode of loosing a bull unsafe. A noble horse was gored 
at night, and died next day. Two different expedients for loos- 
ing them were now adopted. One was to draw the animal up to 
the fence, after he had entered the corral, by the united strength 
of many men tugging at the guasca. One stands with only the 
fence between him and the frantic creature's horns. He takes 
hold of the lazo, and as the guasca is suddenly slackened, he 
opens it, and Bos Taurus walks off. 

The other mode is more ingenious and easier. The bull is 
thrown down by a noose on his heels at the very entrance of 
the corral. A guasca is attached to the lasso about his horns, 
so that it can be pulled open at will. He is headed straight to 
the entrance, and his heels let go. He bounds in, of course, 
and a pull on the newly-applied guasca (contra-guasca) releases 
him, or, if both get entangled in his horns, he in time shakes 
them off. 

By night of the second day they had 31 prisoners. These, 
at $6 40 each, more than pay Don Ramon's capellania ; the rest 



BULL-DRIVING. 433 

he pays for in five-franc pieces. As they are destined to the 
slaughter within the year, there is no need of branding and coun- 
ter-branding them. To counter-brand is to repeat the brand ; 
for the repetition of a brand, like a second negative in English, 
cancels the first. Early the next morning the horsemen are in 
the corral stirring them up. There is a great variety of dispo- 
sition among them. All are hungry, it is true, and utterly dis- 
gusted with their present condition. With a few exceptions, 
there is little fight in them. Horsemen multiply in the corral 
as the bulls grow tamer. Now they surround them, condense 
them, and seem to knead them up into a ball. 

After breakfast I too mounted. Some horsemen from the 
Medio, and others from Don Ramon's, are continuing the knead- 
ing process, and shouting " Toma ! toma !" Toma means take 
it, and is the call to a dog or other domesticated animal when 
you offer him food. Hence it is the voice used to call an ani- 
mal. I do not know as the bulls regarded the word in any very 
inviting sense. 

Now the bars are opened wide and for the last time. Half a 
dozen horsemen are within, and the rest are drawn up in two 
lines, forming a lane toward the banks of the Rio Paila. With 
some difficulty the yard is evacuated, and the bulls stand in a 
lane of horsemen. As they advance toward the opening in front 
of them, we advance, calling "Toma! toma!" We proceeded 
very slowly. One made his escape. Three vaqueros were af- 
ter him. Soon he was sprawling on the ground in advance 
of us, held by his heels, and it was not till the rest were with 
him that he could get up. Several escapes and recaptures of 
this sort delayed us, till Don Ramon decided to pacify a partic- 
ularly refractory fellow that was bent on mischief. He had him 
by the heels, and the other guasca had been removed. He dis- 
mounted from his horse, and stood before the bull, and rubbed 
Cayenne pepper in his eyes. All this while his intelligent horse 
stood bracing backward, holding the guasca tight, it being tied 
to the saddle. Had he stepped forward two paces and let the 
bull loose, maddened by the Cayenne, the result might have 
been tragic ; but the horse knew his duty and did it. Our hol- 
low square at first consisted of 65 horsemen, one at least of 
whom was a little afraid of horns. A good knowledge of bovine 

E E 



434 NEW GRANADA. 

ethics is necessary to the safety of your horse in such a neigh- 
borhood. As the cavalcade proceeded, one after another could 
be spared from it, and in the end only a few of our men pro- 
ceeded with Don Ramon's. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

GRAZIER SPORTS. 



Cara-perro and Grass-climbing. — Virgin Forest. — Manifest Destiny. — Cienega 
de Burro. — A Burial. — Rogacion. — Niguas in Church. — Neglect of the Sick. 
— Bejoicing over the Dead. — Distilling. — Election. — What is in a Name ? — 
San Juan. — Bride's Dress. — A Swim. — Murillo. — Overo. — Buga-la-Grande. — 
Woods in the Night. — Advantage of a Guide. 

A series of knolls overhang the house at La Paila. They 
show rock in but one place, but are steep and almost precipitous. 
Their sides are well wooded for hundreds of feet, but the tops 
are covered with grass. The highest of these is called Cara- 
perro — dog-head. It is supposed to resemble in shape a dog's 
head, and the summit is the tip of the nose. I dare not assert 
that its height exceeds the diameter of the base, but to reach the 
summit cost me the most formidable climbing I ever executed. 
Such hills are common here, and flank the road on the east all 
the way up the valley ; but Cara-perro is the highest for many 
leagues around, and I know of none higher that can be seen 
from the settlements. 

I was told there was a cave on the side of Cara-perro, and I 
was desirous of visiting it. Said cave was merely a cropping 
out of horizontal strata of sandstone, of which the upper, with 
the superincumbent earth, slightly overhung the lower. Such 
is the Caucan idea of a cave. In many other places the steep- 
ness far exceeds that of any artificial terrace. Some of these 
knolls are climbed by steps cut in them, and in places climbing 
would be out of the question. 

For this trip I had selected a fiesta, a day in which they re- 
gard it a sin to do ordinary work, but are ready for any extraor- 
dinary job, as risking their necks on a grassy slope or in a deer- 
hunt. Two gentlemen went with me, and one of the concerta- 



THE GRASSY PRECIPICE. • 435 

dos (men hired by the year), and the carpenter of the hacienda. 
This carpenter is a character. He hears the name of Pio Quin- 
to, hut he rather disgraces it, for the chief characteristics of the 
vagabond seem to be a dislike for work, a love of strong drink. 
geometry, religious books, and loose women. 

Our first precaution was to take a calabaza full of cane-juice, 
here called chicha, but in the valley of the Magdalena, guarapo. 
His Holiness took this in charge, from a natural affection for 
liquids having even the smallest trace of alcohol. We dipped 
into the woods at the base of the hill ; then rising, we came to 
where it was necessary to cut our way with machetes. From 
here we emerged upon a grassy ridge, which terminated like a 
buttress against the steep knoll. 

Here we were obliged to use our hands, holding to the grass. 
The passage of each one made the ascent of the succeeding more 
difficult. I paused to take breath and look at Pio V. I found 
him directly beneath my feet, perspiring profusely, and trem- 
bling like a leaf. He had the consolation of knowing that if I 
lost my hold, I should carry him with me to a distance below 
that it was not very agreeable to fathom with the eye. I do 
not like climbing grass as well as rock. If rock really is fast it 
stays fast, but to have only the strength of a grass root between 
one and perdition is enough to make him shiver. 

From the summit the concertado had to descend and bring 
up the calabaza, which the carpenter was obliged to abandon. 
Meanwhile, around us opened a prospect of great interest and 
beauty. The western chain, along the base of which flows the 
Cauca, stretches from south to north in almost a straight line, 
and rising at a single leap to the greatest height between us and 
the Pacific. Not an inch of the Cauca is visible ; so distant 
and so straight is it that the trees hide it entirely. This forest 
appears interminable above and below, and we forget the broad 
pasture plains between it and the mountains, and the innumer- 
able cultivated patches and houses which it hides. 

But to the eastward we turn with more interest. The River 
La Paila, whose waters are visible at our. feet, has its course 
marked out by the foliage of the guadua, greener than any oth- 
er, and more graceful than can be conceived. In less than a 
league above there is a spot destitute of trees. All such are 



436 NEW GRANADA. 

called llano — plain — whether they be flat or hilly ; and all land 
covered with thicket is called monte if hut a few miles through, 
and montana if more. This was a pasture, where, in the war 
of 1851, were concealed successfully all the horses of the plan- 
tation. 

Still farther in, on the hanks of the Buga-la-Grande, are seen 
the pastures of San Miguel, where the rebels of 1841 discover- 
ed the hiding-place of the horses. These two pastures are but 
specks in the vast landscape of fertile valley beyond valley, un- 
trodden by man since the extermination of the dense Indian 
population whom the Spaniards found peacefully enjoying this 
country. 

Was the sum of human happiness increased by their subju- 
gation? Was their paganism supplanted by a religion more 
moral or less bloody ? What has become of them all ? How 
is it that I have not seen a single Indian in all this valley? 
Who will recount to us the innocent loves that have passed be- 
neath the perpetual shade of those trees on the distant mount- 
ain-side where murmur the head- waters of the La Paila ? Who 
next will visit the long-deserted spot ? Of what race and na- 
tion will be the woodman whose axe will one day sound there, 
prostrating trees that have grown three hundred years within 
the sight of the white man, but where his foot has never trod ? 

Questions who can answer ? With a strong desire of pene- 
trating this region, a desire which perhaps no one yet born will 
see realized, we turned to descend by a route less steep than the 
ascent. Even this led over the top of a lower knoll scarcely to 
be descended, for always descents are more difficult than as- 
cents. An uninterrupted inclined plane inspires a fear much 
like that which we feel on the brink of a sheer precipice, and 
perhaps even greater, when our standing on it is not perfectly 
secure, as it generally is at the summit of a precipice. 

In the meditative mood inspired by those eastward glances, 
I stood on the shoulder of the hill. Some Fourcroyas had there 
thrown up their tall flower-stems 20 feet high, and their sum- 
mits were white with blossoms. These seldom perfect their 
fruit ; but there was sprinkled among them an abundance of 
bulbs, ready to take root on their fall. I had left my machete 
at the house, and I attacked a huge stem, five inches in diam- 



CIENEGA DE BURRO. 437 

eter with my patient pocket-knife. Slowly cutting thus, my 
thoughts reverted to the signification of my employment — a 
Yankee whittling down a century-plant — so small an end after 
so patient a growth. Then I thought of Mexico, and that " man- 
ifest destiny" which neither fortifications nor protocols can re- 
sist — no, nor yet the best interests of both nations avert. 

Southwest from us I saw on this excursion a sheet of water 
that they told me was the Cienega de Burro. I had seen a wa- 
ter-lily from it which was different from any I had seen before, 
and determined to visit the spot ; so I marked a place where the 
pastures approached it nearest, and took the bearings. I was 
told that it was impossible for me to penetrate there alone, but 
I have lost more than I have gained by guides thus far, and set 
off without. 

I penetrated the forest to a considerable distance before I 
found a path that ran in a suitable direction. At one time, as I 
stood on some rich black earth, I felt my feet sting, and saw 
that the ground was covered in all directions with large tiger- 
ants, that were fastening their envenomed jaws in my feet wher- 
ever the alpargatas left them exposed. I ran some rods, and 
stopped still in the midst of them. Again I ran to a clear spot, 
and was able to dislodge my tormentors. No harm came from 
their bites. 

At length I came to open water surrounded by quaking marsh. 
From the nature of the marsh I expected one of those "bottom- 
less ponds" I have sometimes found in New England, but I was 
mistaken. The water was nowhere more than three feet deep. 
I found here a Sagittaria, which looks to me like my old ac- 
quaintance S. variabilis. The Nymphasa I spoke of was abun- 
dant, and of other rare plants a bountiful harvest. 

A second visit here cost me great labor with little fruit. I 
cut half an hour in a thicket of Mimosa, advancing in all that 
time less than a rod. I then abandoned my work, and made a 
wide circuit round the obstacle. This time I found my horse 
had slipped his tether and escaped to his native pasture, the Me- 
dio, and I had to walk all the way home, and return next day 
for my montura. 

Near the house are various holes rich in water-plants and 
germs of future musquitoes. They were excavated for brick- 



438 NEW GRANADA. 

earth, and are some of them carpeted over with the beautiful 
pale-green Pistia Stratiotes, and in others grow Limnocharis, 
Hydrocleis, Heteranthera, a Nymphsea, and other interesting- 
plants. In still another marsh grew Pontederia azurea. This 
and Stratiotes were common enough on the coast, hut here they 
strangely reappear together after an interval of hundreds of 
miles. Is the water brackish here ? It may be slightly, though 
I have not satisfied myself of the fact. Two days' journey in 
toward the Quindio, however, are the famous salt-springs of Bu- 
rila. They belong to the hacienda, and, by an ancient royal 
prerogative, I am told that they have the right to make salt 
there without paying tax to government. It is strange they do 
not, as the salt used here comes from beyond Bogota, and can 
not be cheap. 

The salt of Burila contains iodine. Hence the use of it as a 
condiment cures goitre. I attempted to penetrate there, but my 
plan failed. I am told that plantains grow there, and the Phy- 
telephas, so the land must rise very slowly, as we can also see 
from Cara-perro. On one occasion, a gentleman and some peons 
profess to have penetrated two days farther, and to have turned 
back for want of water. Even at this distance from the river, 
the wild lime (Citrus Limetta), supposed to be an introduced 
tree, is found growing wild. What an amount of valuable land 
lies waste here ! No one lives at Burila, for they would be lone- 
ly in there. It is better to be poor than to be doomed to a soli- 
tary life, where fiestas and dancing can not come ; so they bring 
salt from Cipaquira, live in villages, dance, and are poor. 

In damp ground, and near the Paila, I found an Aroid plant 
of long leaves, with a juice acrid to blistering, and an atrocious 
odor, like that of its congener of the North, the skunk cabbage. 
This abomination, known as runcho, bears the name of Dieffen- 
bachia. Alas ! poor Dieffenbach. Did he think that Schott 
hit the mark when he honored him with the name of the most 
disgusting plant in all New Granada ? 

I made an attempt to descend the Paila to the Cauca, or rath- 
er to follow a road down. I went on for miles (it seemed; 
through crooked paths, past estancias, where herds of swine arc 
called to eat green plantains by the side of the fence. Passing 
dangerous quagmires, I would come to the hut of some hog- 



A CATEEPILLAE. 439 

raiser, who rarely comes out to grass. I became tired of riding 
over such horrid paths, left my horse at a group of huts called 
Frisolar (bean-patch), and still went on. At Caracoli I found 
some better houses, but learned that the distance from the Cau- 
ca was yet too great for me to accomplish and be out of the 
boundless contiguity of quagmire before night. 

At the Medio my attention was particularly called to a large 
solitary tree called Guazimo, probably Guazuma tormentosa. I 
was wondering whether a full catalogue of its epiphytes would 
not amount to a hundred species. It seems to me quite proba- 
ble. Here and there hang down cords of a Cactate plant, Rhip- 
salis, called here disciplina. There a Bromeliate, Pitcairnia, 
shoots out a spike clothed with bracts, the upper ones of which 
are scarlet, like the tipping of a trooper's feather. Numerous 
Orchids, of course, there are, some of which were brought down 
for me by the lazo, and one or two species of Tillandsia. 

At a house near the bridge I found a bread-fruit growing. 
It is Artocarpus incisa, with a leaf similar to that in the South 
Seas, but the fruit is a little smaller and full of large seeds, 
while in the islands it is generally seedless. It is valued here 
for the seeds, which are called chestnuts. ISTo one had tasted 
the 'baked pulp. Here a circumstance occurred that gave rise 
to a hearty laugh all round. I was talking with a couple of 
women that I suppose are grandmothers. They wore the cami- 
sa as low as the most fashionable ball-dress, and as loose as are 
any of their habits. Well, on the very edge of the camisa of 
one of them I spied a large caterpillar, crawling where he was 
in momentary danger of falling in. I wished to remove the in- 
truder without alarming her, but, as I put my hand toward her, 
she mistook its aim. Her virtue was alarmed ; she gave a start 
and a scream, and consummated the catastrophe. I could make 
no answer but to laugh heartily, and tell her to take it out her- 
self then. 

From the superior whiteness of the inhabitants of the Medio, 
the balls here are rather attractive to the Pailefios. I went to 
one myself, which I found, as usual, stupid. I must, however, 
give some account of it. There were no seats, or not enough, 
for the women, so they sat on the ground at the sides of the 
room. Men stood in two groups just within the doors, and 



440 NEW GRANADA. 

some also were permitted farther in. Cakes and aguardiente 
were for sale in the corredor. Another table, more convenient 
to the damsels within, has on it in a "bottle a fluid that bears the 
familiar name of a friend of mine, Miss Taylor. They spell the 
word mistela, translate it mixture, or, in this particular case, 
cordial. The staple of the dances was waltzes and the bambu- 
co. Generally the floor was filled with waltzers. One couple 
I saw that were not over eight years of age, managing to skip 
about so that none of their seniors should tread on them. 

The bambuco I have not yet described, although it was per- 
formed for my instruction at Fusagasuga. One couple need the 
whole floor in the bambuco. It is decided that he is to dance 
it. Then they wonder who she will be. He bows to her. She 
borrows a pocket-handkerchief (mine, perhaps), and steps out. 
She moves to the music, but ad libitum as to the direction, and 
he follows her motions as faithfully as a mirror. If she moves 
east, he dances west ; when she goes north, he goes south ; when 
she turns a little, he turns as much, and in the contrary direc- 
tion. Thus they advance, recede, turn side to side, or even en- 
tirely round ; so they dance without ever touching each other, 
till she becomes tired, drops a courtesy, and sits down. He 
thinks he has acquitted himself extremely well ; his carelessly 
turning up his ruana, to show the brighter colors of the under 
side, is not bad. But his chef-d'oeuvre was that kick of the dog, 
without losing either time or place. The quadruped, surprised 
and indignant, looks round, and, could he speak English, would 
ask, " Why I ?" But his partner appears unconscious of this 
achievement ; not that she is insensible to it, but it is beneath 
the solemnity of the occasion for her to be betrayed into a smile. 

Her mamma, a coarse Bogotana, with a cigar in her mouth 
and a turban on her head, really thinks that Solitud is not so 
bad a dancer ; so, too, thinks the young occupant of the house, 
and he is a judge, for he is an artist. We saw him first, you 
recollect, in the jail at Cartago, but he has forgotten that little 
circumstance, and we will not remind him of it. I see that two 
of his productions now grace the walls. The San Cristoval will 
do ; but that hunting-scene is magnificent. For music, we must 
content ourselves with a bandola (banjo) and pandarete (tambo- 
rine), the noisy alfandoque held over the performer's head in the 



RUSTIC BALL. 



441 







INVITATION TO DINNER. 443 

extreme left, and a noisier drum, which, though not seen in the 
sketch, is heard all over the Medio. 

The torbellino or whirlwind is another dance after the bam- 
buco plan, only, as the name implies, more violent in its action. 
I saw at this ball the queerest couple I have seen yet. A little 
girl of under ten was called out — sacada — to dance the bambuco 
with the tallest vaquero of the hacienda. To see her little body 
directing the movements of the whole of his reminds one of a 
battle between a king-bird and a crow. 

On the south side of the river, in the edge of the woods, lives 
Sanchez el Manco — the one-handed. He is the most thrifty 
tenant on the estate, and has horses, cows, swine, and rather ex- 
tensive fields, including a cacagual, or cacao-orchard. Now and 
then he sends me word that he has a raceme of bananas ripen- 
ing, and then he is sure of a call from me. His children arc 
the prettiest in all this pasture, and he likes my approbation of 
his proceedings. One day he wished to present me with a fowl. 
I told him I would prefer a single leg of it, and he invited me and 
Don Damian to come down next Thursday at 2. On Thursday 
it rained, but we did not mind that. Soon we were dry in his 
house, and our horses and saddles safe in the porch. We sat 
with him an hour and a half, had a pleasant call, and then we 
went home without saying or hearing a word about dinner. 

Sanchez has with him a lad that is suffering from inflamma- 
tion of the eyes. They say he must go blind. I tell them no. 
If they will send him up to the house daily for a week, I will 
make them better in that time. I give them to understand that 
medicine as well as advice shall be gratuitous. They promise 
to send him, because they can not decently avoid promising. 
They never sent him, and, as I left La Paila, the light of day 
was closing on the poor boy forever. 

I am reminded of another thing here that surprised me not a 
little. I noticed a deep hole in the door-yard of Sanchez. I 
asked why he dug it there. He said that it was done by mon- 
ey-diggers. They thought they had ascertained that there was 
a treasure concealed there, and begged leave to dig it out. The 
one-handed consented, on condition that they would fill up the 
hole. They dug, and, finding nothing, they were so disappoint- 
ed that they went off and left the hole open, saying that they 



444 NEW GRANADA. 

had worked enough for nothing. When a boy, I had seen holes 
dug for Kidd's treasures 100 miles from tide-water. There is 
nothing new under the sun. 

This side of Sanchez el Manco lives Timotea, who gains an 
honest penny "by making palm-leaf hats, and sudaderos or sad- 
dle-mats of rushes. I engaged a sudadero of her for two dimes. 
I went at the appointed time, and it was not done. I went 
again, and she had finished it and sold it. She promised me 
another. I went for it, and, as I asked why she had not done 
it, I was whittling a fruit with my penknife. She had not fin- 
ished it for the want of two pieces of hide to protect the rushes 
from being worn by the girth. "Can not find two bits of hide ?" 
said I ; " here are two." So saying, I picked up a piece of hide 
on which a girl had been sitting to braid, cut off a projecting 
corner, and cut it in two. Timotea was surprised. She evi- 
dently had not thought of that : it ruined the seat. The next 
time I called my sudadero was ready. 

In one of these houses I saw a corpse. It was that of a man. 
It was decently extended on the earth floor, with a sort of robe 
on, with a girdle of new rope of cabuya (Fourcroya). Several 
candles were burning around, being stuck into masses of mud, 
shaped so as to answer for candlesticks. A large number of 
persons were gathered around, quiet and thoughtful. One was 
saying a string of Paternosters and Ave Marias in Spanish. I 
was there when they carried him out on a bier made on the 
spot by tying slats of guadua together with bejuco. The burial- 
ground is not far from there. It is in a desolate condition, and 
the fence has entirely fallen. The grave was five feet deep, of 
ample width, but shorter than the body. An extension, or place 
for the head, was dug in at the southern end, so that when the 
body was properly placed in its last resting-place, it occupied 
the whole grave, and in filling it no earth would be thrown into 
the face. It was altogether as respectable a burial as you would 
find in the same class in life in a Western state. All the relig- 
ious ceremonies (simply prayers of laymen) were finished before 
the burial began. 

Deaths had been frequent, and particularly in this family. It 
was decided to be an epidemic, and the remedy was concluded 
to be a procession in honor of Santa Barbara — a rogacion to her. 



ROGACTON TO SANTA BARBARA. 445 

She is the patroness of the little chapel at La Paila. I had vis- 
ited said chapel once before, when, one Sunday, the piously-dis- 
posed went in there to pray. Short work we had of it, for our 
orisons were scarce begun when the service was adjourned. The 
cause was that the niguas had taken possession of the holy 
place, and were concentrating on the defenseless girls their myr- 
iad hosts. I washed half a dozen off my legs on coming out. 
Now, however, it had been sprinkled and swept till it would do 
to worship in very well. 

The priest came in the evening, bringing with him his wafers, 
a chalice wrapped in a cloth and tied under his arm, and a vial of 
wine with a paper stopper. During the mass the next morning 
a poor fellow was attacked with epilepsy in the church. They 
took him into the sacristy, and, to recover him, they concluded 
to apply wine to his nostrils. The wine in the bottle is uncon- 
secrated ; so they turn the vial up till the paper stopper is sat- 
urated, and rub it on the nostrils and lips of the patient, and 
then put it back into the vial. After the consecration came the 
procession, on a very humble scale, with an image borrowed for 
the occasion. The hostia must be carried under an umbrella for 
want of a canopy, and in default of a better I lent them mine. 
It was whole when I closed it last, many months before, in Bo- 
gota ; noAV I find it broken, no one knows when, where, or how. 
After the ceremonies were over, I found a cork that I could 
spare, and whittled it down to fit the vial of wine, and threw 
away the wad of paper. 

The wife of Martin, who lives just at our gate, is dead. He 
takes on like one distracted. She died, they say, of worms, a 
very common complaint here, where nearly every pair of jaws is 
a cane-mill. They kindly sent her medicine from the house, 
but it was not administered, because they had no molasses to 
give it in. 

I was called to see a sick child, three years old, between the 
house and the river. It had worms, and was quite sick. The 
mother wrung her hands, and cried, " Oh dear ! what can moth- 
er do for her poor little nigger girl ?" Negrita is a favorite term 
of endearment here, even for white children. I inquired what 
they gave, and found it was worm-seed herb (Chenipodium an- 
thelminticum), which grew in the door-yard. They gave it in 



446 NE W GEANADA. 

aguardiente. I directed the doses to be increased in size and 
frequency, and given in molasses. I hunted up a cowhage 
pod for them. I also advised the discontinuance of verdolaga, 
which is nothing Ibut that inert weed purslane (Portulacca ole- 
vacea), so common in the United States, on which they were re- 
lying, and told them to come next day and I would give some 
calomel. Hearing nothing from them, I went, two days after, 
and they had not complied with any of my directions, as they 
thought the child "too weak to bear medicine!" One morn- 
ing, soon after, I said, " There was a hall last night?" "No, 
Sehor. " ' ' But I heard a drum — was there no dancing ?" " Yes, 
Senor, there was dancing, but not at a ball. That little girl died 
last night, and they were rejoicing over the little angel (ange- 
lito)." 

I never saw this strange ceremony, for they preferred I should 
not. The little thing was tied into a chair, and put on a kind 
of shelf, like an image for worship, high enough up to leave the 
whole room for dancing ; and there parents and friends had 
danced most or all the night. The anticipation of this merry- 
making tends, I think, to mitigate the dread of losing a child. 
The ground of the rejoicing (which is also an ordinance of the 
Episcopal Church of the United States and England) is, that the 
child has gone to Limbo, and not Purgatory, and will suffer no 
more. 

If those who doubt which kills most, disease or the doctor, 
would only go with me to the benches and floors where lie 
stretched the miserable sick poor in the Valley of the Cauca, 
they would return with quite a different idea of the healing art. 

All the ill-bred children here fear me or my spectacles, I know 
not which. This is particularly the case with two little girls, 
of five and three, that live between the house and the river. 
They are fat, very black, and always naked. I met their moth- 
er coming up from the river with a large mucura of water on her 
head. As soon as the children saw me coming, they clung to 
her clothes so that she could not walk. After I had passed and 
they began to go on again — the little ones fearfully looking back 
at me — I turned as if to walk back. Instantly they bellowed, 
and clung to their mother. Before she had time to look round 
with the heavy load on her head, I was again innocently walk- 



RIDING A HOG. 447 

ing toward the river. I repeated my trick again with the same 
success, and then, thinking it "too bad," I left them. 

I stopped to watch the motions of another black rascal, a boy 
of about ten, who was victimizing a pig. He had a lazo of be- 
j uco — vine. The pig had been found in a pen, and noosed 
there. The boy was still in the pen, but the pig had run out 
through a hole two feet square, that served as a door. If the 
boy should stoop to go through the same hole, the pig would 
drag him off in the stooping posture. And should he climb 
over, the pig would run off with his lazo before he got down ; 
so he wound his bejuco around a stake beside the hole, which 
held his pig till he had got out. Then came a grotesque attempt 
at riding, with a fall every two rods ; but as he clung to the be- 
juco, his steed could not escape him, and so I left them. 

Across the river is a little establishment that is occupied, 
sometimes for weeks together, by Mother Antonia, an authori- 
tative old beldame, very useful on the place. When corn is to 
be planted, or when so near ripe that monkeys and parrots begin 
to steal it, she lives there, and keeps one or two boys with her. 
I found her in possession of two species of quadruped poultry 
I should call them, only they were kept for their flesh and not 
their eggs. The larger is called guatin, and may be Dasyprocta 
Acuschy. It is as large as a cat, and its gait is a succession of 
leaps, like a rabbit's. There was but one of these, and that final- 
ly ran away, pursued by dogs. The other animal, Curi, was of 
the size of a very young puppy of the mastiff breed. I suppose 
it to be an Ansema, and, if it be not the Guinea-pig, I have for- 
gotten the difference. Both are raised for food at the head of 
the Cauca. The Curies keep in joints of guadua prepared for 
their refuge, and eat plantain leaves and fruits. They are nice 
pets. 

I went once to visit Bernabe, the district judge. He is a ne- 
gro, with a mulatto wife, Dolores, and two or three children, that 
seem a little lighter than she is. I may be deceived, but, again, 
perhaps Bernabe may be. The judge can not read. He lives 
on the base of a knoll overlooking the pasture of Guavito, and 
his house is supplied by a small brook that flows down a ravine, 
and is often almost dry, or with no running water. There al- 
ways happens in the beds of these brooks to be some water in 



448 NEW GRANADA. 

the charcos or holes, and as you advance toward the source you 
find a very little running in the channel. Cattle understand 
this, and, when impelled by thirst, follow a dry brook up till 
they come to water. 

I found Dolores in the kitchen, and she sent a little girl to 
tell me she could not leave it just then. I went out for the sake 
of seeing a Caucana fairly busy. She was distilling aguardi- 

< r B -~ -~^ ente. A large tinaja, A, was standing on 

"W======*/ tulpas (three stones), in the middle of the 

j ^«;;j:;ri..jL floor, with a fire under it. It contained some 

/ ^ \t^* fermented cane-juice. The condenser was a 
/ I brass pan or kettle (paila), B, that covered 

\ h. J the mouth of the tinaja. Under this con- 

\^___^s denser was a peculiar earthen plate, C, called 

domestic still. a n obispo — bishop — so constructed as to re- 
ceive the drops that fell from the under surface of the kettle, and 
permit them to run ofTin the tube D. This tube is a mere reed. 
To prevent the free escape of steam, a lock of cotton was put in 
the mouth of it. To keep the condensing kettle cool was Do- 
lores' present occupation. She dipped it full of water from a 
trough, and then dipped it out again into the trough, and thus 
continued filling and emptying it incessantly, while the drops of 
the dearly-earned fluid fell deliberately into a junk bottle placed 
beneath. 

I went up into the woods for plants, and on my return found 
Dolores released, and selling their sirup — melado. I asked her 
at what price she sold it, and she did not understand me. They 
have no liquid measures in use here ; so I asked her how much 
that tarra held which she was using for a measure, and she told 
me it held a half dime. Spirits are sold by the bottle at a dime 
a bottle. The bottles vary much in size, but they are chiefly 
wine bottles. 

"We went down to the house — a clean and lofty sala, with 
an inner room adjoining, and one porch converted into a room 
that serves at once for entry and bed-room, with a thoroughfare 
through it. A hammock constantly swings in the centre of the 
sala ; a little table of guadua is immovably placed in one corner. 
On this I found now displayed all their table furniture — two 
plates, a knife and fork. Some fried fish, from the Cienega de 



ELECTIONS. 449 

Burro, and a roasted plantain, were set on, and I was bound to 
have a lunch. I did not enjoy the fish so much as I did the 
plantain, but I ate it resolutely. It was kindly meant. The 
last time I saw Dolores she gave me $3 20 to "buy some medi- 
cine for her, which I have duly sent her. It was a quack medi- 
cine, and my conjectures as to its use would not be much to her 
credit ; but we must make all allowance, and hope the best of 
her. Two of her little girls are at the Overo, further south, 
boarding and going to school. 

I went back to Libraida, the head of the district, to see an 
election. A series of them, four days apart, and about six in 
number, were coming off. It was under a new law, which was 
exceedingly rigid in securing the rights of the citizen to a se- 
cret vote. The elections must fall on different days of the week, 
and of course only one of them on the Sabbath. All votes in 
the same province must be of the same precise size, about six 
inches square. Three officers sit in a room, and no man can 
come in except electors, one at a time, with a ballot once folded 
between the thumb and index of the right hand. The loss of 
either of these organs disfranchises him. He holds it out hori- 
zontally ; an officer takes it, unfolds it face downward, drops it 
into a box, and the voter goes out at the back door, where no 
persons are permitted to remain, and jumps over the fence in the 
rear. The counting was a great ceremony. The declarer held 
the ballot aloft in both hands, so that all around could see both 
sides of it, and then read it while others recorded it. 

I saved a copy of the Christian names in the check-list as a 
curiosity. The most frequent name was Jose-Maria (Pepe), of 
which there were 19 voters in a list of 324. Next most pop- 
ular was Joaquin, 17. Then followed Jose, 13 ; Pedro, 12 ; 
Francisco (Pacho), 10 ; Jose-Antonio and Manuel, 9 each; An- 
tonio and Juan, 8 each ; Manuel-Jose, 7 ; Vicente, 6 ; Dionisio, 
Ramon, and Santos, 5 ; Domingo, Felipe, Isidoro, Juan- An- 
tonio, Julian, Mariano, Miguel, Tomas, Torribio, and Santiago, 
4 each. The following eleven names were repeated three times : 
Agustin, Antonio-Maria, Benito, Bonifacio, Eugenio, Eusebio, 
Fernando, Ignacio, Juan-Agustin, Luis, and Nicolas. There 
were two each of the following twenty names : Alejo, Anselmo, 
Carlos, Elias, Emigidio, Esteban, Felix, Hermengildo, Ildefon- 

Fp 



450 NEW GRANADA. 

so, Jacinto, Juan-de-Dios, Juan- Jose, Luis- Antonio, Martin, Ma- 
nuel-Antonio, Pascual, Pedro-Jose, Salvador, Tiburcio, and Ti- 
moteo. Seventy-eight had no tocuyo among the voters. Their 
names were Adolpho, Alonso, Ambrosio, Anacleto, Anastasio, 
Andres, Angel, Angel-Maria, Apolinar, Atanasio, Bartolome, 
Bautista, Benancio, Bernabe, Bernadino, Bias, Camilo, Cancio, 
Cayetano, Ciriaeo, Claudio, Cristobal, Damian, Damoso, Enri- 
que, Evaristo, Exequiel, Facundo, Fermin, Fulgencio, Hilario, 
Jesus, Joaquin-Antonio, Jose-Abad, Jose-Barbaro, Jose-Ber- 
nardo, Jose-Eulofio, Jose-Fortunato, Jose-Manuel, Juan-de-la- 
Cruz, Juan-Maria, Juan-Nepomuceno, Justo, Leandro, Lino, 
Lucio, Manuel-Ascensio, Manuel-Eleaterio, Manuel-Esteban, 
Manuel-Santos, Marcelo, Marcos, Melchor, Paulino, Pedro-An- 
tonio, Pedro-Esteban, Pedro-Fermin, Pedro- Valencio, Pio-Quin- 
to, Primitivo, Quinterio, Rafael, Raimundo, Ramon-Nonato, 
Roso, Ruperto, Segundo, Servando, Silvestre, Simon, Sinfo- 
roso, Teodor, Traton, Valentin, Yalerio, Victor, and Victorino. 

Now all the gentlemen aforesaid, and not a few minors — me- 
nores de edad — have been anticipating the advent of Sanwhan, 
or, as they spell it, San Juan. It is not the saint, however, 
but the day they seem to expect as eagerly as any schoolboy 
his holidays. For many weeks I have heard of the approach- 
ing San Juan as a great time, like the Fourth of July with us. 
While Edge, the pyrotechnist, has been busy in Jersey City 
with his dangerous playthings (edge-tools are always danger- 
ous playthings), Luis, sitting under his shed, has been making 
cohetes or rockets. He makes a strong case of goat-skin, and 
puts in it a tea-spoon full of blasting -powder. One end of this 
is attached to the top of a hollow stem of a woody grass chus- 
quea filled with a mixture of pulverized powder and charcoal. 
Both are tied to a small stick, the straighter and lighter the bet- 
ter, but the first that comes to hand will answer. 

The eventful day was Friday, 24th June ; but these events 
love to be anticipated. On Tuesday a couple went to Libraida 
to be married. Their return on Wednesday noon was celebra- 
ted and announced by a sufficient number of these rocket-crack- 
ers described above. This was also the signal for the com- 
mencement of a day ball in a cottage near the gate. In the 
course of the afternoon I went down, and came back with a de- 



BRIDE'S DRESS. 451 

scription of the dress of the bride, put on, of course, after mar- 
riage, for nothing but sombre colors are allowed in church. I 
give it for the benefit of any who may have occasion to adopt 
it for the same important ceremony. 

The hair was short all over the head, but, being as crisp as 
wool, retained without difficulty a side-comb of gold and some 
artificial flowers on each side, and a complete garland behind. 
The ear-rings were of gold, quite original in their pattern, re- 
minding me of the top of a steeple, the ball being represented 
by a stone of the size of a cherry. On the neck was, first, a 
chain of gold going twice around ; second, a string of pearl 
beads ; third, another gold chain. The camisa was of fine white 
muslin ; sleeves of another muslin, shot with red, reaching be- 
low the elbow ; collar of the same, two fingers broad, falls down 
from the top, which is so low in the neck that it hangs off one 
shoulder, but, per contra, probably does not extend half way to 
the feet; enaguas of de laine, slate color, with two' flounces. A 
belt of material resembling that of gentlemen's braces passes 
twice round the waist and tucks in. Below this, the skirt sags 
in front three inches. In the mouth, a cigar ; on the hands, four 
gold rings with emeralds ; on the feet, nothing, with pantalettes 
of the same. 

The ball, after lasting some sixteen hours without intermis- 
sion, closed early on Thursday morning. After a ball or other 
fatigue a swim is very refreshing. My affairs brought me acci- 
dentally in contact with a swimming party this morning. It 
consisted of the whitest and handsomest girls of the Medio, the 
young men of the " house," and vaqueros. I believe I have de- 
scribed the bathing dress of gentlemen and ladies. I will re- 
peat, however, that the men wear a pocket-handkerchief — never 
more nor less. The girls wore less than ladies do, only a skirt 
and a handkerchief tied around the neck at top, and confined at 
the bottom by the skirt. I fancy they profess not to go in at 
the same place, but in two places, say five rods apart ; but they 
do not fail to invade each other's bounds. The women use a 
profusion of soap. 

As the parties were about entering the water, the mother of 
some of them, and grandmother of the younger ones, who had 
staid behind to get a child asleep, came riding down to the riv- 



/ 



452 NEW GEANADA. 

er at a full gallop, shouting "Whoop! San Juan!" This cry 
from young and old, male and female, became familiar to my ears 
before night. Their road back was the same I was going. Most 
of the men were on horseback, and the females on foot. It so 
happened that the cavalcade rode on each side of the pedestri- 
ans, assuming the form described above in the process of cattle- 
driving. This, when perceived, amused them not a little, and 
they rode on, calling "Toma! Toma!" 

After my return home it was announced that a party of San- 
juaneros was approaching the house. Demetrio loaded the gun, 
and Mother Antonia hastened to place cake and aguardiente on a 
table in the corredor. The party advanced with whoopings and 
rockets, to which Demetrio responded, setting fire with the wad 
to the thatch of the cane-mill. In the party I counted twen- 
ty-six females, every one of them astride (to be specific) of a 
horse, a mare, or a gelding. Without dismounting, the wine- 
glass of raw spirit, without sugar or water, passed the whole 
cavalcade. The men drained it, the women only sipped. They 
went as they came, on the gallop. I joined the party some time 
after at the lower cottages. Many had flags made of a hand- 
kerchief, and adorned with ribbons. All the women wore shawls 
on their heads under their hats and ruanas. 

I found them galloping back and forth on the vast plain, with- 
out more aim than bees seem to have when they swarm. One 
would snatch another's flag and run ; others start in pursuit ; 
others follow to see the sport. The rest go so as not to be left 
alone. In three minutes the whole party are halted in a spot 
half a mile from where they started. Pio V. had in his hands 
the remains of an unfortunate hen that had been snatched from 
some twenty hands, having lost in these struggles much of its 
feathers, its life, and, I believe, its head. It was not a very pret- 
ty plaything — neither wholesome to the eye nor nice to the hand. 
A cock had been beheaded according to the rules on page 414 
a little before I joined the party. 

Arches were erected in front of two houses, ornamented with 
cloth, etc., and fruits, as plantains, slices of a huge species of 
Citrus (called cidra), and a pineapple. Under the arch you find 
a bench and a table, with aguardiente for sale. Now you find 
them all gathered before a house. Fulgencio, ex-judge of the 



SAN JUAN. 453 

district, has bought a bottle of spirits there, which must pass 
from mouth to mouth till it is empty. Owing to the time lost 
in pouring into a glass, a bottle is drunk in less time without 
one, and, what is surprising, is emptied by fewer persons. 

This was followed by a race between two horses, in which the 
stakes were from a dime or two to perhaps three dollars. My 
conclusion from all this is, that the beloved disciple was fond of 
horse-racing, dram-drinking, shouting, and gunpowder ; but per- 
haps it is John the Baptist that is to answer to these charges. 

The day itself, Friday, differed in nothing from its vispera or 
eve, only perhaps the assemblage was more numerous. With- 
out doubt, on both days all the saddles and bridles were in req- 
uisition, but the horses and riders were not all the same as yes- 
terday, and perhaps more were in jpelo (without saddle), and 
with halters for bridles. 

Saturday brought no remission, unless it be that the cohetes 
had been nearly all let off. Toward night there was a bull- 
feast in the front yard, but quite a different affair from those of 
a higher grade, as at Fusagasuga. Young bulls are selected, 
and yet, upon the whole, I had rather be the bull than the tor- 
eador. He is led into the middle of the yard with a guasca on 
his horns. He is thrown down by hand, not by a lazo on his 
heels. A noose is then put on his heels, and that on his head 
taken off. On his release he dashes at the horsemen, and they 
avoid him. They provoke him by riding up to him, and he 
makes another pass at them. A footman approaches with a ru- 
ana in his hand ; the bull springs at him, and he leaps upon the 
fence. The bull shows no perseverance, but runs on as though 
he had not thought of his adversary. Another dexterously 
leaves his ruana on the head of the bull. If other measures fail, 
the toreador escapes danger by lying down. When, at length, 
the bull becomes tired of the sport, and no longer resents the 
insults he receives, the gate opens, and he runs off to the pas- 
ture from which he was taken. Even women were on horse- 
back in the inclosure ; but at one time I saw a " speck" of dan- 
ger. Fulgencio attempted to avoid the bull by leaping on the 
fence, but, being " half-scratched," or " a little warm" (medio 
rasgado, un jpoco caliente, en pea, teniendo perico, en polvo, 
etc.), was not as active as usual, and lay at the animal's feet', if 



454 NEW GEANADA. 

not at his mercy. Where should a bull begin on a district judge 
that can not read nor write ? Not at the head nor the heart. 
Imitating awkwardly the process of rolling up a piece of cloth 
to lay on the shelf, the bull began in the middle ; but, after a 
poke or two, the simultaneous attack of other toreadores made 
him desist. 

Leaving the bull-feast, I went to the Medio. Here the com- 
pany passed me. The most natural comparison would be with 
a party of Pawnees in gala dress ; but I thought first of the Bac- 
chantes, the excesses of whom are probably exaggerated in the 
accounts given us. Stationary writers are tempted to exag- 
gerate in order to say something extraordinary : travelers have 
no motive to exaggeration ; their only difficulty and their wisest 
aim is to make their readers comprehend and believe things as 
they really are. Those women who have two shawls use the red 
on these occasions, and wear the blue on their head in church. 
Most ruanas also have red in them. As women wear the same 
hats with men, and on horseback wear the same ruanas and sit 
in the same way, at a distance it is impossible to tell a woman 
from a man. 

Matea, " whose husband was killed in the wars" (very lately, 
I should judge, from the age of her youngest child), excited my 
attention by her hard riding and perfect abandon. Do not im- 
agine her a widow in black. All the black she wore was placed 
by nature in the cellules of the cutis, and as for the fathers of 
her children — quien sabe ? 

Jacinto, nearly our best horseman, on our return fell into the 
river from his horse, which stood perfectly still till he mounted 
again, benefited, no doubt, by having taken a little water with 
his spirits. 

On Sunday again there was horse-racing, and we had anoth- 
er bull-feast. I have not spoken of the balls, though there has 
probably been one every night. It is really amazing to me to 
see so much drinking, so little drunkenness, and no fighting, es- 
pecially in a people where drunkenness is not very disreputa- 
ble, and where they have a civil war every ten years. 

San Juan being past, we move up the river. We enter the 
pasture of Guavito. Down on our left is the corral, and on our 
right the house of the black judge Bernabe and Dolores the dis- 



MURILLO. 455 

tiller stands on a commanding knoll. Now the forests approach 
each other, and have the appearance of having in ancient years 
been cut through with the axe. One or two mud-holes have 
rather a profound look. Then comes the River of Murillo, the 
southern boundary of La Paila, of the canton of Cartago, and 
once of the province of Antioquia. It is a small stream in 
which the water barely runs in dry seasons- 

On the left,, after passing the river, are the houses of the Ha- 
cienda of Murillo. We can not stop to study the family at the 
principal house. I only mention that here I saw a female mon- 
key chained up : these unlucky and disgusting prisoners are al- 
most always of the other sex. Here, too, I saw a cat, an animal 
about as rare here as parrots at the North. This and the last 
I saw were both blind of an eye. I can not tell why the cli- 
mate disagrees with this cosmopolite animal. 

My stay was mostly at a smaller house, the guest of Don 
Manuel. He is a wandering character, who seems to have 
lodged here as he drifted about. He has seen many and queer 
things, especially in B^rbacoas and Choco, where he has been 
for gold, little of which seems to adhere to him. He is quite 
communicative, especially when drunk, for he will get almost as 
drunk as an American. In one of these confidential moods he 
assured me that the servant, Catalina, whom I was teaching to 
read, was his own daughter ; had been his servant from child- 
hood, but knew not her parentage. The great trouble with him 
is that I never know when to believe him, drunk or sober ; and 
yet, withal, he is a very intelligent man, with more than an or- 
dinary share of learning. 

Catalina was now housekeeper. Another Manuel — a great 
rogue, as Don Manuel said, made up the force of this bachelor's 
hall. Don Manuel has had a wife, but I know not where she 
is, and also has respectable daughters somewhere. Catalina is 
about seventeen ; not a bad-looking girl, but rather too fond of 
the priests, her protector thinks. She seems willing to learn, if 
it will do any body any good to teach her ; but when I reproach- 
ed him for leaving " his daughter" in ignorance, he said that he 
would willingly have taken pains with her had she wished to 
learn. 

Don Manuel delighted in Choco stories of snakes and secret 



456 NEW GEANADA. 

remedies for their bites and for hydrophobia ; of ants whose bite 
was mortal ; of creatures that are insects at one part of their 
life, but then their feet take root, their backs bud and produce 
stalks of flowers, the seeds of which are again walking animals. 
And he tells what he himself has seen and knows till you per- 
suade yourself that he believes in every word he says. My own 
opinion, duly considered and mathematically expressed, is, that 
the moral momentum of the man, found by multiplying the ac- 
curacy of his observation by the fidelity of his narrative, and 
deducting for the resistance of forgetfulness, is not sufficient to 
overcome my incredulity; or algebraically expressed, o X n—f— 
m<b. 

One of his best stories is of an attempt to cure leprosy with 
the bite of a venomous serpent — the equis. I expected that 
heroic treatment would succeed in his hands, but the venom 
appeared unproductive of good or harm. This particular equis 
had been caught in a lazo, and housed in a calabasa. Don Man- 
uel discovered, to his astonishment, that he had a control over 
the beast, which would come out of, and return to his " house" 
at his command, as if it understood Spanish. He believed that 
a great many negroes and Indians in that serpentiferous Choco 
have antidotes and prophylactics for the most deadly venom. 
He tells of a Chocoano that had a tame coral snake, the pet of 
the whole family, till, in a fatal hour, she brought forth a brood 
of young ones, that, ere he knew of their birth or they their duty, 
had mortally bitten one of his children. But it is not fair to re- 
peat these stories while I refuse to endorse them. They are, how- 
ever, but a natural production of the Pacific coast. Still I must 
admit that I had to believe some of his toughest stories in the 
end, and more of them may be true than I now think. 

Once for all, let me say that I have little confidence in snake 
remedies. The most positive statements in respect to them are 
often entirely false. It is a general impression that the venom 
of serpents of different species differs more in power than in na- 
ture. This is very doubtful. Sensibility to poison certainly 
varies in different species. A bite of a rattlesnake that would 
kill a horse would only make a man deadly sick (with fright 
perhaps), and would not harm a hog. 

A spontaneous recovery from a snake-bite gives reputation to 



EEMEDIES FOE SNAKE-BITES. 457 

an inert remedy. Besides the Mikania Guaco, of which I have 
never seen the flower, and Aristolochia anguicida, also called 
guaco, there are many other plants that have the same name and 
the same reputation. All have two distinct colors in the leaf, 
as has the rattlesnake-leaf of the States — Goodyera pubescens. 
Many rely on the cotyledons of Simaba Cedron, called cedron in 
New Granada. Besides extraction of poison, and the immedi- 
ate severing of the bitten limb, I know of no surer way than to 
combat the symptoms as they appear. 

Leaving the broad plains of Murillo to the west, you ad- 
vance to the Overo. Overo means egg-tree, and has its name 
from a tree that bears a fruit in shape resembling an egg. 
Overo has an unfinished church — or chapel I suppose it is, for 
it is in the district of Buga-la-Grande. You pass a small 
stream, in a very large bed, having every appearance of being 
subject to violent freshets, and beyond you come to the Porta- 
zuela, the residence of the amiable Dr. Quintero. 

Dr. Quintero is a bachelor of 32, but has living with him his 
widowed mother and three amiable sisters — the youngest about 
13. Here I had the pleasure of eating with the family again, 
" as heretics do." One little thing, the first time I ate here, took 
me by surprise. It was after a late dinner, between eight and 
nine. Of course, chocolate followed immediately on the conclu- 
sion of the meal. I had finished my cup, and it had disap- 
peared, when, to my surprise, I found another was prepared for 
me. I must be known, then, by my reputation of drinking two 
cups of chocolate at a sitting. 

Dr. Quintero has a medical library, and practices physic. 
He reads, however, neither English, French, nor German. In 
this case, his library can consist only of old books and text- 
books, for none of the current medical literature in this century 
flows in Latin or Spanish channels. I have seen no other doc- 
tor's office, study, or library since I left Fusagasuga, although 
there doubtless is one or more practicing in Ibague, and I saw 
the one that called to cure the ear-ache in Cartago. 

Dr. Quintero does not pretend to live by his profession. I 
think none but an avaricious man (and he is not) could practice 
here without a loss even. He owns the hacienda, or uncultivated 
area, it may be called, of Sartinajal, farther up, and off the road 



458 NEW GEANADA. 

to the east. He has also pastures and a herd of mares near his 
house. So it seems as if he learned his profession as a matter 
of respectability — a proper mode of employing his youthful 
years. And was he not right ? Shall a man he thought crazy 
because he prefers respectability to wealth? I am ashamed to 
think what Dr. Quintero would say of our candidates for med- 
ical honors when he came to fathom their motives for embracing 
the profession, and found them all, rich and poor, instigated by 
the universal mania for wealth. 

I was charmed with the first appearance of the ladies here, 
but found them, as it seems to me, too timid to serve one for 
company. They appeared most at home, secluded with their 
needles, in their inner apartment. I invaded their sewing-room, 
hoping to make myself at home there too, but my experiment 
was not successful. An acquaintance with them must be the 
work of time. 

We see in the Cauca no casus claustradas, or complete 
houses, containing a court in the middle, except in paved 
towns. I know of none between Cartago and Tulua. So, when 
I speak of Dr. Quintero's kitchen, I mean a separate building 
used for that purpose. Dr. Quintero's kitchen has a chimney. 
The design of this is to give draught to a kind of furnace or 
brick stove, with openings on top to set earthen kettles in. Had 
it been three feet higher it would have passed out of the roof, 
and delivered the kitchen from smoke, but they had not thought 
of that. 

On leaving here the little sister made me a present of a cord 
made of horsehair, to bind my bundle of paper to dry plants in. 
The advantage of it is that it does not injure by exposure to wet, 
nor can dogs eat it. These exemptions make hair ropes — cer- 
das — invaluable for tethering horses, a practice quite necessary 
here. The best of these which I ever saw was also a present 
to me from Dr. Quintero, quite a number of horses having been 
despoiled of their flowing honors on my account one morning 
while I was there. The small cord I have lost. Of all little 
thefts I have suffered here, this grieves me most. 

The mud-holes-^— atascaderos — of the Cauca Valley are formi- 
dable to pleasure-travelers, as they are continually marring the 
comforts of the journey. Many of them are watercourses over 



BUGA-LA-GRANDE. 459 

which there are the remains of a bridge ; but if any of them are 
passable they are at once forgotten, while the sloughs to be 
crossed make you remember them a long while. One of these, 
oddly enough, occupies Dr. Quintero's gateway, like a sort of 
moat, so that all footmen have to climb the fence, for you could 
not walk through the gate without wading in mud more than a 
foot deep. A formidable specimen of the same occurs half a 
mile south of his house, in the road. I crossed it by jumping 
my horse into it, and then following it up some way till I found 
a place where it was possible to jump out. 

Soon we came to a magnificent stream, larger than the Paila, 
but smaller than the Rio de la Vieja. The farther we go up 
south, the more merry the streams are. Pebbly bottoms and 
rippling currents were all the country lacked below to make its 
beauty perfect. This stream, el Buga-Za-grande, once rose so 
suddenly that, though my baggage went over easily two hours 
before me, when I came to it, having ladies in company, all 
thoughts of passing it that day were abandoned. We went 
down the river to a hacienda and passed the night, and crossed 
at a place much below early the next morning. That night I 
slept (as far as sleep was possible) without my hammock. We 
were on our way by sunrise, threading lanes in a settlement west 
of the road. Here we passed a country school in full operation 
at about eight in the morning. The scholars were to go home 
to breakfast at about ten. 

North of this river were a large number of scattering houses 
and a church. Here is the head of the district of Buga-la- 
Grande. This place is memorable to me for its oranges, at once 
plenty and excellent. For the second time in my life have I 
really found oranges in abundance. Dr. Quintero had a good 
supply to spare for his guests, but here there were more than 
were needed. My feast here will not be forgotten, though two 
dimes would give one as much in New York market ; but we 
do not enjoy them so. 

A few miles farther on we came to the stream and hacienda 
of Sabaletas — the Minnows — the residence of Sr. Vergara. At 
the cane-mill here I drank a mixture of fermented guarapo (here 
called chicha) and boiling cane-juice, already quite sweet. I 
found it delicious, and, in spite of all warnings, drank of it very 



460 NEW GRANADA. 

freely. To the surprise of all, I escaped unharmed, while they 
looked for nothing less than a fit of colic. 

I came upon this family one night after they had all gone to 
bed. The sala has hammock-loops in it, and, in consequence 
of this convenience, in three minutes after the bridle was off my 
horse, the candle was again extinguished, and I was comfortably 
reposing in my hammock. 

Sefiora de Vergara is a Venezolana. I find that I peculiarly 
like all the emigrants from Venezuela that I have yet seen. 
Perhaps they know the heart of a stranger, being themselves far 
from home, though among their own race. The daughters seem- 
ed very well educated, and were quite pleasant company. I had 
with me a dilatory Granadino, who liked to chat with them, but 
he must be in Tulua that night. They urged us warmly to 
stay, and, when we constantly refused, the lady said, "If you 
will go, you have not a moment to lose. The upper end of 
the road is not fit to travel in the night, and you will now be 
caught before you can reach town." She almost drove us from 
the house. I was very much delighted at the time, and still 
more when I became convinced that her energy was all that 
saved me from sleeping in the woods that night. 

It was sunset when we parted, and I had three miles yet to 
go to reach La Bibera, the home of the Vargas family, to which 
I introduced the reader at Cartago. Much of the way was 
woods, and all of it was mere path, without a regular road. My 
horse had never been there ; but I had been over part of the 
road four times, and part of it but once, and then with company. 
Starlight in a tropical forest, far from any house, is nothing to 
trifle about, especially after you have seen the peasantry skin- 
ning a leon. This animal (probably Felis concolor, puma, 
painter, and panther) appears to range from Canada to Patago- 
nia. The individual which I saw was killed in the forest of 
the river. It seemed little inferior in strength to his African 
namesake. The tigre (Felis onca, jaguar, ounce, catamount — 
if, indeed, these animals are the same all over the continent) is 
weaker, more agile, and more cruel, as is generally supposed. 

I had for my consolation the fact that deaths from wild beasts, 
venomous serpents, mad dogs, and lightning are very rare among 
mankind. True, there might be more from serpents and wild 



BENEFITS OF A GUIDE. 461 

beasts, were it the custom to be roaming about in deep woods 
in the night. My horse could see the path though I could not. 
I could still see enough to keep my general direction, and all 
accidents were in our favor, so we came through safe. 

I found it once a day's journey from La Bibera to Dr. Quin- 
tero's, thanks to the marvelous efficacy of having a guide. Said 
guide was Lorenzo, the body-guard to Senor Flojo of La Paila. 
I had assured Senor F. that we should get home by night. 
"No, you will not," says he; "you will sleep at Portazuela." 
" I shall certainly be home." " You certainly will not," says 
the good Emilia. But I had not counted on the benefits of 
having a guide. 

Lorenzo contrived to get ahead of me at one place before we 
reached the highway. Soon I detected him leading me off a 
little to the right. " You are out of the road," I shouted. " I 
know the way," he answered. Soon it was obvious that we 
were not approaching the highway. I reined in. " This is the 
best way for us," said he ; "I have an errand at Sartinajal." I 
love to see new road ; there was no real necessity of my calling 
at Sabaletas, so I gave in. 

Five minutes after, I happened to look at my arm ; the shirt 
sleeve that covered it seemed to be made of strainer-eloth. " I 
have not my own shirt on," I exclaimed. "Yes, Senor, you 
have," said the confident Lorenzo. "But I tell you I know! 
Look ! " and I raised my hand, not to strike him, but to put him 
down more surely by ocular demonstration. " Indeed it is 
yours, Senor. The fact is, that a cow ate a sleeve out of it, 
and the Lady Emilia put in another of cloth, as like it as she 
could get." I looked at the other sleeve ; it was a " fact truth." 
Guides do know some things. 

They were glad to see me at Sartinajal. The woman turned 
out to be Lorenzo's mother. The house was a mere hut, and 
no white people lived there, or perhaps ever had. I must get 
off and go in, indeed I must. The saddles were taken off, and 
the horses tethered. I must look at the country, for I was far- 
ther from the river than any other house stands that I have seen. 
There is little or no timber growing about here. The country 
was rolling, and most of it much higher than the bottom of the 
valley. It seemed a boundless pasture, ready to be occupied if 



462 NEW GRANADA. 

there were any one to herd and care for the stock. From here, 
too, I could see the distant pasture of San Miguel, which I had 
seen from the top of Cara-perro. It was now many miles to 
the northeast. 

It was not time to go yet, indeed it was not. I must eat 
something. No matter if I was not hungry, I must eat out of 
compliment. I suspect that the dog Lorenzo had brought with 
him a couple of ripe plantains to roast for me here, as the sur- 
est "bait to catch a Yankee. After eating, I must not go yet. 
There was something drying that his mother must iron and send 
to Dr. Quintero's. Now the cat was out. It was very true 
that I should not see La Paila that night. The dry pasture 
furnished me nothing to study. I had exhausted my occupa- 
tions and my patience. 

We left Sartinajal at nearly 5. In a mile or two we came to 
the Buga-la-grande, -and followed down the river, crossing its 
bed five or seven times. Had the river been higher, we must 
have taken a longer road. We crossed it last at dusk, just as 
it began to rain. Soon I could not see the ground. I could 
still make out Lorenzo's form before me. When that disappear- 
ed, I asked him to throw up his dingy ruana, that I might see 
his shirt. Said shirt was not very white, and at last night shut 
that in, and I could not see my horse's ears. I had strained my 
eyes till my head ached as if it was splitting, and that ugly ra- 
vine was to be crossed. I shut my eyes but opened my ears. 
Now a jump downward, and my horse is in the ditch. Much I 
feared that we should fall backward or sidewise in scrambling 
out. All's well that ends well. At 15 minutes past 8 I was 
safe under the hospitable roof of Dr. Quintero, and resting my 
aching head on the table. I breakfasted next morning at Mu- 
rillo, and at 1 P.M. was at La Paila, blessing my stars that I 
did not often have a guide. 



THE GRAZIER'S FAMILY. 463 



CHAPTER XXX. 

THE GRAZIER AT HOME. 

House-building of Guadua, Mud, and Thatch. — Plan of House. — Servants. — Ab- 
lutions. — Breakfast. — The Dairy. — Dinner. — A Sabbath. — Baptism. — Mar- 
riage. — Dinner and Ball. — Drinking without Drunkenness. — The Bundi. — 
Carrying home the Girls. — A Love Affair. — Lay Baptism. — Lying. — A Week's 
Sickness. — Diet. — Monkey and Fowl. — Slaughter of Beef. — Turtles. — Agricul- 
ture. — Prices. — Fertility and Poverty : Abundance and Hunger. 

I WISH to give a more accurate picture of domestic life among 
the first families in the Cauca. For this I have selected the 
Vargas family, as I wish strictly to avoid entering the domain 
of fiction by combining the occurrences of two or more families. 
I write this in the earnest hope that no reader will recognize 
the originals, or, if unfortunately it should be otherwise, that 
the discoverer will be so good as never to make known their 
name or residence to any inhabitant of South America. 

It will be recollected that when I introduced Senor Eladio 
Vargas to the reader, I mentioned that, in the times of slavery, 
they were wealthy. Besides this estate of La Ribera, and their 
mines in Choco, that now yield not a dollar, they have two 
haciendas in this valley, though there is a lawsuit with an ad- 
verse claimant to one of them. La Ribera alone could support 
them handsomely were it well managed, but their chief desire 
seems to be to keep things along here, and to spend in Cartago 
all they can scrape from this estate, while I doubt whether the 
others yield any thing at all. 

I hardly can guess what was the theory on which the house 
was arranged with regard to the highway. It faces nearly to 
the north, stretching from east to west 137 feet. It is covered 
with thatch of Carludovica, here called iraca, and, when on the 
roof, paja. The ground inclines slightly, so that while the west 
end is some two feet above its surface, the opposite extremity 
is a hole dug as much into it. Still the floor is not quite level. 
Said floor is of brick in the finished rooms and corredores, and of 



464 



NEW GEANADA. 



earth in the others. The walls are, like those of ordinary cot- 
tages, entirely of three materials — guadua, bejuco (vine), and 
mud. Posts of guadua were placed erect" on the ground at dis- 
tances of a few feet ; slats of guadua are tied to them both with- 
in and without ; all the space between them is filled with mud ; 
then the whole is plastered over with mud for mortar ; part has 
been whitewashed with lime, and it is intended at some future 
day, when they can get lime enough, to give the whole a second 
coat. 

Lime is hard to get. It is an ugly thing to carry in sacks 
on mule-back. I know of but two lime-kilns in all the Valley 
of the Cauca — one at Vijes, the other five miles above. These 
are not worked much, for the demand is so small, and transport- 
ation so difficult; so plastering and. bricklaying is all done with 
mud, and even whitewash is a luxury for want of wheels. 

In theory the house is 115 feet by 19, and divided into 8 
rooms, each 19 feet from north to south, but of various widths. 
But the roof projects so far over as to cover a corredor 7 feet 
wide. Seven more rooms are constructed all around the house 
on this corredor. Besides these, in the rear are two more houses, 
one adjoining, and the other a little removed from the principal 
house. All this is made clear by the following diagram : 



4 



xvm 



xzni 




17 



UL JUL. JLl J 




THE GRAZIER'S HOME. 

Here the corredores are numbered in Roman, and the rooms in 
Arabic. The principal corredor, XVIII., extends nearly half 
way round the house. Just outside of it is a trench made by 
stamping of horses, the wallowing of a few hogs belonging to 
the servants, and the occasional visits of horned cattle, etc. 



PLAN OF THE HOUSE. 465 

This, in the rainy season, furnishes an admirable supply of 
musquitoes. On account of them, as it is not healthy to sleep 
under a musquito net in the house, I hung my hammock in this 
corredor in front of room 2. I afterward occupied No. 9, which 
was rather extravagantly furnished with a large, coarse talble 
on trestles, two bedsteads, which served me only for tables, 
shelves, book-case, etc., etc., and one chair. My hammock swung 
from corner to corner, so far as the re-entering angle would per- 
mit. My table stood before the window, which was a grated 
opening two feet square, with a shutter. I had also a large 
table for day use outside the door in the corredor, but I could 
not leave things there in the night, because the goats used to 
jump up on the table to sleep. 

No. 1 was bachelor's hall. It was 15 feet by 19, matted, had 
a door and a window, and 3 bedsteads. Gentlemen travelers 
sometimes slept here, and more or less of the males of the fam- 
ily. No. 2, 21 feet by 19, was the female room. Don Ela- 
dio, his wife, and their sisters, occupy it when they are here. 
His mother rarely, if ever, comes. It had a window down to 
the floor, and a door opening into No. 3, a narrow room 7 feet 
by 19, occupied by either sex according to convenience. This 
has a window, and is a thoroughfare from the women's room to 
the sala, No. 4. This last is 19 feet square, has doors in all 
its four sides, with shutters to all of them. I mention this be- 
cause most inside doors here are mere door-ways, and, if closed 
at all, it is with a curtain. . The size of the remaining rooms is 
6, 11, 20, and 14 feet by 19 : No. 5 only is entirely completed, 
and possession of it is disputed, as it were, between the young- 
est son Carlos and a hired man or two. 

If we pass out the back door of the sala into the corredor 
XI., we at once enter on the domain of a small army of female 
servants. A brick bench (poyo) runs along the wall, about 
20 inches high and 24 broad. East of the door this serves for 
a forge for minor cookery, as chocolate-making, etc. Next the 
door, on both sides, it is used for seats. The next portion is 
used for a dresser for dishes, etc., by day, all of which must be 
carried in at night for fear of the goats. The west end is built 
into a tinajera, pierced for three tinajas, with a space under them 
where pans may be placed to catch what water exudes through 

Gg 



466 NEW GEANADA. 

the unglazed earthen vessels. Near this, too, is the grinding- 
stone, with a place under it to put fire to heat the stone when 
chocolate is to he ground. It ought to be a little over 100° F. 
Again, in the extreme south end of corredor XIX., a continua- 
tion of this, are two large kettles of cast brass (pailas), each a 
section of a sphere, set in an arch. They are used for making 
sweetmeats on a large scale, and for other extraordinary opera- 
tions, as soap-making. 

Over all this space Pilar reigns supreme. She is a mulatto 
woman of about 20 or 25. Her mother is the negress who 
rules in the Vargas kitchen in Cartago. As to her father, it is 
a matter that defies my conjecture. She directs affairs, sets 
the table, waits on it, sews, teaches three little black girls to 
read^ using the corredor as a school-room, and is, in fact, the 
most efficient person of either sex on the whole place, and does 
more work than any two of them. 

Pilar, the little girls, and one or two of the adults, sleep in 
No. 10, separated from my room only by a partition so thin that 
I can hear them at their prayers occasionally of an evening after 
the family have all gone to bed. The rest of them sleep in 23 
and 24, or in the kitchen, or wherever they take a fancy. Rooms 
21 and 22 are store-rooms or pantries ; 25 is the kitchen ; and 
26 combines, I think, a kitchen, store-room, and sleeping-room 
for the old cook. In the centre of the kitchen, 25, is an arch 
about 8 feet long, pierced for several earthen kettles, with a 
stump of a chimney about as high as a man's head. An oven, 
O, a few rods east of the kitchen, under a small roof of its own, 
completes the conveniences of the house of La Ribera. The 
kitchen is infested with negro children, dogs, and smoke, and, if 
seen detached from every thing else, would resemble the abode 
of a family of savages, or, rather, of a small tribe of them. It 
can become no dirtier — can be made no cleaner. 

Here lies Roso, a little boy of whose parentage I know noth- 
ing, if parents he ever had, stark naked, rolling in the dirt. 
There again is a babe (naked, of course) with a piece of meat in 
his fist. He is the offspring of Escolastica, a black of about 
17. Older than Roso is Cristina, who generally wears an ena- 
guas, often rent from top to bottom, or with a breadth worn out 
of it, but never clean. Isabel, older still, and always naked 



KITCHEN AND ITS OCCUPANTS. 467 

down to the hips, wears enaguas. Two girls, still older, but 
under 10, sometimes add to this a mantellina or blue woolen 
shawl. Pilar would be glad to keep dogs' noses and children's 
ringers out of the dishes preparing for us, but the others care 
nothing about it, provided they do not take so much as to be 
missed, and her authority is faintly felt in the kitchen. 

A desolate shed of a chapel serves us for worship, as we are 
too far from the Church of San Vicente. It is without pictures, 
images, pulpit, seats, or floor, and has but one confessional and 
one altar. In the sacristia are some vestments for ordinary 
service, some cheap implements for mass, a respectable old mis- 
sal, and a complete set of wooden toys for the amusement of the 
infant Savior (Nino Dios — Boy-God), when they make a pese- 
bre — manger — at Christmas. 

A blacksmith's shop, and shed that will hold two horses ; a 
cane-mill, that is never used ; the foundations of one building, 
never to be completed, and the ruins of another, that fell down 
in the last revolution before being roofed, make the sum total 
of buildings. 

There is no garden, and no fruit-trees that are of any use, ex- 
cept a single second-rate orange-tree. Three other fruit-trees 
yield nothing that is not stolen before it is ripe. Such is La 
Bibera. Let us now see how a day passes there. 

We are not early risers at the house, as the family residence 
is denominated by the cottagers ; but, as the hour of six ap- 
proaches, also approaches the sun to the horizon, and would be 
visible soon after but for the clouds, that render a rising or set- 
ting sun a thing unknown here. As rises the sun rises also 
Pilar, the "mistress of keys," crosses herself, and, I conjecture, 
dresses herself — perhaps washes her hands and face. She sets 
herself to sweeping the back corredor, the sala, and front corre- 
dor, a task hardly worthy of the chief housekeeper when per- 
chance goats or cows may have made the front corredor their 
dormitory. Escolastica rises from a hide laid on the ground, 
leaving sprawling naked there the son of (she says) Dionisio, 
and, without any dressing or washing, sets herself about some- 
thing that bears the semblance of work. Three negritas, naked 
from the waist upward, one with her skirt rent in three from 
top to bottom, come and place themselves astride the wall of the 



468 NEW GEANADA. 

corredor — -jpretil — -to see if any body passes in the distant high- 
way. This mode of sitting appears more agreeable to the ne- 
gras than in a chair : Escolastica and others older find it con- 
venient at times. Estefana, the cook, rakes open the kitchen 
fire, and lights her cigar ; or, if the fire is out, strikes a light 
with flint and steel as readily as you would put on your coat. 
Her tinder is the huge pith of the Fourcroya — maguey. 

Koso, the negrito, the happy possessor of his nudity and not 
a thread more in the world, comes from his nest, and, without 
any fear of wearing out his clothes or blacking his skin, sits 
down on the floor to play. Joaquina leaves her lair, and sits 
down till milking-time. Josefa rises and walks about. The 
men-servants make their appearance from various nooks where 
they have passed the night. Manuel goes to his smithy, that 
he may not be seen about the house idle. 

Manuel Estevan, Dionisio, some shades lighter, and Jacinto, 
many shades darker, also take their seats on the pretil, a bench, 
and my table, and appear to be busy with a part of a saddle, a 
bridle, and a halter. Aureliano, Cosme, and Gregorio, three 
white boys, who, under the name of servants, contrive to escape 
with half the work one boy ought to do, post themselves in the 
corredor to watch the operations of three dogs. Volcan and 
Enamorado, led by Folia, selected, at 5 o'clock, one of the milch 
cows for their amusement, and they have worried the poor thing 
ever since ; but they are all cowards, and dare not bite her. 
Kamon, a larger boy, neither whiter nor blacker than the other 
two, creeps, as if with sore toes, to the inclosed pasture — potre- 
ro — and drives several horses into a yard ; throws a lazo over 
an old white horse, which is too lazy or too well bred to run, 
and goes off to an estancia to look for plantains for breakfast. 

Carlos Vargas, the youngest of the gentlemen, catches another 
with more difficulty but more dexterity, and calls Jacinto from 
his busy idleness to saddle it, and also another for himself. 
They start off together to the open pasture, and will return at 
breakfast-time or a little after. They go to see if any thing has 
happened there. Toledo (this is his surname), the horse-break- 
er, has tied each " hand" of a colt to the corresponding foot, and 
is riding him round and round in a very small circle in the sug- 
ar-mill. Pepe Gomez, a relative living in the family, has ridden 



EISING AND ABLUTIONS. 469 

off to the cacagual, or chocolate-orchard, to see if any cacao 
needs gathering, and to see if the hogs have broken in. Pepe 
and Antonio come forth from No. 1 or No. 2, as the case may- 
be, and, without attending at present to their ablutions, sit down 
in the corredor to read a Spanish translation of a French novel, 
published as a sort of extra by the Correo de Ultramar in Paris. 
I have not particularly introduced these younger brothers of 
Don Eladio. Of Pepe I will only say that he is worth any 
two of his brothers in business, energy, and reliability, and only 
inferior to the pious and dignified Eladio. Antonio, who is but 
17, has quite an active turn of mind, that loves to exercise itself 
in horse-racing, dancing, cock-fighting, in the administration of 
baptism and medicine, and other useful offices. 

Prompt washing is not the custom here, and I have been led 
gradually to defer my ablutions till near breakfast-time. I have 
gone to the tinajera, and found there a bowl and water, but no 
dipper nor servant ; half an hour after I would find a dipper, 
but no bowl ; and the next time all that I wanted except water, 
for now the tinajas are all empty. Soap is sometimes imported 
— that made here is black and pasty. In all cases it is dear. 
Ashes are not sold, nor is soap-making a trade; neither are 
the berries of the Sapindus (chambimbi) of as much use as 
might be expected. They are abundant, being uneatable by 
animals, and about half an inch in diameter. 

Now that I have marshaled my dramatis person^ do not 
imagine that I am going to follow them all through the day. I 
will only say farther of their color that Pilar and Josefa are 
mulattoes (the former good-looking and intelligent), and the 
rest of the females of pure African blood, except a babe three 
eighths, perhaps, white. In number I make 23, and of the fam- 
ily there are enough in Cartago to swell the total to about 40. 

Now there passes out of the front door a procession of five 
women and girls, carrying on their heads an earthen jar, a round 
calabash, a long calabash, a tarro of guadua of two joints, and 
a green jar in form of a double cone. Those who can not carry 
their vessels mouth upward have served themselves with an 
orange for a cork. They go to the river for water. 

Joaquina makes her appearance in the corredor with a jar 
on her head, and in her hands a hair rope and two totumas. The 



470 NEW GRANADA. 

cows have been kept from their imprisoned " sons" all night, 
not without some lowing and bleating. Gregorio admits one 
of them. Her delighted offspring rushes to the maternal bos- 
om, but alas ! only to find a halter on his nose, the middle of 
which ties his head to her " arm," while the end is employed 
in tying her heels securely together. Both generations are in 
the milker's power, and, with a totuma in her left hand, she pro- 
ceeds with her right to rob him, before his face and eyes, of the 
last drop that pays the trouble of extraction. 

Mother and son are permitted to pass the day together in the 
potrero, and two of the boys shut up the calves at night. As 
they perform this service on horseback, it is not always done 
with the fewest steps possible. After milking 14 cows, the old 
lady puts her jar, with about four or five gallons of milk, on her 
head, and returns to the store-room, 21. Part of the milk she 
boils. Often a part is taken for our morning chocolate. In the 
rest she rinses a pound of tripe, and adds lime-juice and too 
much salt. The coagulated milk, when drained of whey, is 
cheese ; of course, this can not be kept like ours. 

Cosme is set to cut up (jpicar) sugar-cane for a horse that is 
tied in the corredor of the sugar-mill. He borrows a machete 
of an older servant, who, like a soldier or ancient knight, wears 
it always in his sheath. The pieces must not exceed two inch- 
es in length, and ought not to include the whole of any of the 
hard nodes in the same piece. Aureliano, who has been present- 
ed with a machete for his own, is sent to an estancia to feed in 
the same manner a horse tied there to fatten. He is kept there 
to save the trouble of carrying cane. His stable is a thicket of 
plantains, to one of which — an herb 8 inches in diameter and 
12 feet high — he is tied. He takes him to the river to wash 
and water him, an operation that costs an hour, for the rogue 
of a rider must take time to swim, and, as he finds two or three 
amphibious negritos to help him, it can not be done in less. He 
can whip any of them, and even whipped Ramon the other day, 
who is much older and bigger than himself; he is the pertest 
little scamp in the hacienda, and Gregorio and Cosme have to 
" stand round" when he is by. 

But breakfast is ready. Some dried beef — tasajo — has been 
boiled in water to make a soup — sqpa — thickened with cakes of 



BKEAKFAST. 471 

maize, or with plantains roasted and crushed. The meat, reduced 
to a form resembling oakum, has been fried. It is so dry that, 
if laid on a sheet of letter-paper instead of a plate, it possibly 
might neither wet nor grease it. It is rather insipid. The bor- 
ders of the platter are covered with slices of plantain, fried. 
When perfectly ripe they are delicious ; a little earlier they are 
insipid and hard ; green, they do not fry them. Generally, a 
roasted plantain is found by each plate. Entirely ripe, they are 
very good ; a little short, they are mealy and insipid ; green, 
they are hard and (to me) uneatable. Unfortunately, the peas- 
antry and the servants generally eat up the ripe ones, and leave 
us with green ones. But there is another dish ; and of this you 
must take the testimony of an enemy, for I detest it. It is call- 
ed sancocho, and is the staple of both meals, and with the peas- 
antry generally the only dish except roasted plantains. For 
this dish, take any quantity of tasajo (that which did not spoil 
in drying is best), with or without bones, fat or lean ; put it in 
an earthen pot — olla — with a pailful or less of water ; add shreds 
of green plantain, and, if you have them, pieces of squash and 
yuca-root (Manihot utilissima). Potatoes, turnips, carrots, par- 
snips, onions, and beets would be admissible, but the first can not 
grow here, and the others are universally neglected. Sweet po- 
tatoes — batatas- — inferior to ours, so that I doubt their identity, 
are sometimes added, and tomatoes. This mixture is then boil- 
ed. The bogas eat it with spoons of totuma from the shields 
of tortoises ; the peasantry from broken ollas and totumas with 
spoons of wood or totuma ; the respectable familes eat it with 
heavy ancient spoons of massive silver from soup-plates of the 
old " willow pattern" of our early days. A fried egg or two, or 
as many as there are covers, may be found on the table. If 
boiled, they are eaten with salt only. As you are closing your 
meal, a small cup of thick chocolate is set upon your plate, or 
offered you on another plate. Saucers are seldom used as such. 
Your chocolate contains about two cubic inches of cacao and 
brown sugar — panela — ground together on a warm stone. 

The tables are not well attended here, considering the dispo- 
sable force of a family. More than half this charge may fall 
upon the ama de Haves — " mistress of the keys." I ought to 
add that breakfast concludes with water. Two or three turn- 



472 NEW GRANADA. 

biers, or silver cups, are "brought in on a tray. They are suc- 
cessively filled from small tin cups till all have satisfied their 
thirst. Then, if a priest be present, but never otherwise, the 
"Lord's Prayer" and some others are said by way of returning 
thanks. 

It is now about half past 10. How, or when, or where the 
servants have breakfasted I know not, only that it is not to- 
gether, nor at a table, nor with knives and forks. Things wear 
as quiet an aspect after breakfast as before. Viviana has caught 
every hen that has shown a disposition to lay, and shut them 
up to secure the eggs. The negritas now set themselves down 
in the corredor of the store-room to sew, under the direction of 
Josefa, or to read, taught by .Pilar. Private instruction here is 
no better than the schools ; and a mulata, a slave 18 months 
ago, just able to read, is no better than the public teachers, nor 
much worse. The first book is the "Cartilla." It contains 
the alphabet, and abs, and some prayers. This is followed by 
the " Citologia," no more interesting to youth. I have looked at 
every book in which children learn to read, and have not yet 
found a child who had any thing to read that could interest him. 
An old law-book ; "Artillery Tactics ;" the "Theory of Human 
Liberty and Constitutional Eights," a Protestant tract — any 
thing that is not damaged by being worn out, or missed if lost, 
is good enough for a reading-book. 

More horses are now saddled, and all the young gentlemen 
— including the three adult servant gentlemen, who neither dig, 
nor chop, nor go afoot — are scouring over the plains ; but wheth- 
er they are looking after stock, or chatting with the peasant- 
girls and projecting another ball, is more than I can tell. Nor 
can I tell much better what the women are doing — not mak- 
ing the beds, nor washing the windows, nor sweeping the floors, 
nor making puddings nor pies. The patter of quick footsteps 
would indicate a cataclysm or a frolic. The. voice of cheerful 
song here never comes from one whose hands are busy. They 
are not brewing, and it can hardly be possible that they are 
baking, although they have two or three forms of cake made 
of the starch of yuca (not the Yucca of botanists) ; but these 
are rare. One of them, the suspiro — sigh — greatly resembles 
that Northern confectionery called a sugar kiss, in being filled 



DINNEE. 473 

with minute air-cells, only a "sigh" is larger than a "kiss," 
and not so sweet. Another kind of cake, almojavana, almost 
exactly resembles sponge cake. You can hardly persuade your- 
self that it contains no flour. 

One by one the men drop in. The long table is again cov- 
ered with a cloth. Pilar carries in dishes from the back corre- 
dor, and, carefully wiping them, puts them on the table. It is 
noticeable that there is never a knife or spoon too much on the 
table, but not always enough. The entire absence of teaspoons 
is remarkable. All their spoons are a little larger than our des- 
sert spoons, but contain more silver than our largest. All the 
excess of silver and other table furniture must be kept carefully 
locked up, for servants are very careless here. The store-room, 
too, must never be left open, and the fruit-orchard ought to be 
always under lock. 

The dinner begins, as the breakfast did, with soup. The 
everlasting sancocho is sure to be present ; but in addition to, 
or in place of the meat-oakum, perhaps you may find a guisado, 
much like baked beef. It is often very tender, and, I think, 
superior to our ordinary New York cooking. After the meat 
comes a teacup or small bowl of boiled milk, eaten generally 
with roasted plantains ; to this succeeds sliced brown sugar 
(panela), sirup, or sirup and milk boiled together, or some other 
sweetmeats. The varieties of these, from squash to fig, are in- 
numerable. With these and with chocolate, they never fail to 
mingle their extemporaneous cheese ; or, if this be wanting to 
their chocolate, they substitute its principal ingredient — salt. 
After the dulce comes water, served as in the morning. Dur- 
ing a meal they rarely or never drink, unless it be wine or 
aguardiente. 

The sun is now hastening toward the hills that separate us 
from the Paci£c, and finally enters the immovable belt of cloud 
that surrounds the horizon. 

The almanac does not give the time of rising or setting of the 
sun, for there is not much difference at different seasons of 
the year, and it would be useless to calculate it when it could 
not be used for regulating clocks, if they had them ; but clocks 
and almanacs are alike scarce. The almanac is only to show the 
day of the month, the saint of the day, and the rising of the 



474 NEW GRANADA.. 

moon. The moon exerts an imaginary but important influence 
upon agriculture here. They salt cattle and kill trees in the 
decrease of the moon — el menguante. They plant trees in el 
creciente — the increase of the moon ; and I know of none who 
doubt its influence. I have found no evidence of it any more 
than that the pupils of cats' eyes indicate the state of the tides, 
as some believe. They pay no heed to the sign of the zodiac in 
which the moon happens to be. 

The calves are now shut up. Escolastica goes out and col- 
lects weeds (Sida — escoba) for a new broom. The negritas set 
themselves to playing at marbles with corozos, the seed of a 
thorny palm, in the front corredor. A peasant from a little dis- 
tance comes to the house. Five dogs bounce out upon him ; 
the peon coolly draws his machete ; Yolcan, more zealous than 
prudent, receives on his " hand" a machetazo, which, for a day 
or two to come, will make him put down three and carry one. 
A boy brings in three eggs tied in a cloth to exchange for a 
candle, both bearing the value of a cuartillo. Ramon brings in 
a load of cane on a horse. The pack-saddle has two horns — 
one before, the other behind. To each of these is hung a hook 
on each side, and on two of these hooks rests the cane. He tells 
me his load has not slidden off the hooks more than once in com- 
ing. All the cane for the cane-mill is carried in this way or on 
human heads. A horse draws four guaduas at a time (six if 
seasoned) with one pair of hooks, the other ends resting on the 
ground. If a single guadua is wanted, it is tied to the horse's 
tail ; the boy mounts his back, and rides home in triumph. 
Sometimes a man on horseback draws a guadua for a quarter 
of a mile only with a lazo. 

It begins to grow dark. The cattle and horses approach the 
houses. The wildest stay near the cabins in the edge of the 
forest ; the tamer come to those at the foot of the hills. The 
goats come down from the hills or in from the plain, and would 
get into our very beds if we would let them. These precau- 
tions look as if the " lions," " tigers," and " bears" of which 
they speak (humble imitations at best) were dangerous ; but, 
after examining all the stories I have heard, I can not certainly 
learn that they ever did any harm, except by frightening peo- 
ple. A cricket — chillador — in a corner of the room makes a dis- 



EVENING EMPLOYMENTS. 475 

tracting noise, incredible to one who has not heard it, and we 
are compelled to kill him. The wind, which blew from the sea 
all the morning, is now blowing seaward, bringing from the 
woods an ample delegation of musquitoes. Viviana comes from 
the kitchen with a furnace of fire on her head. She sets it in 
the corredor, and with chips, cobs of maize, and fragments of 
guadua, makes a smoke to drive away the musquitoes. The 
family sit on a bench, some heavy arm-chairs, and the pretil or 
railing of the corredor. Antonio has his guitar. Jacinto has 
his tiple in the back corredor, where the women are smoking. 
Two negritas are waltzing " on the sly" in the dining-room. 

At length a lighted candle is placed on the dining-table. A 
negro comes to have a demand written ; for such things the fam- 
ily good-naturedly find time, and paper, and pens, and ink, and 
law. Pepe Gomez brings in the writing-case and makes out 
the document. Pepe is reading aloud in the "Piquillo Aliaga" 
by Scribe. Toledo and others are listening, and at every sur- 
prising passage they exclaim " Caramba!" 

Pilar carries the dishes to the inner closet, leaving behind two 
knives, and a definite number of cups, spoons, saucers, and 
plates, and two tumblers. She spreads the table-cloth, puts on 
the plates, a knife, a piece of" cheese," and the spoons. Some 
green plantains, fried, and then flattened between two stones, 
come in. Next enter three cups of chocolate on a plate. Each 
of these is set on a plate by itself. The rest are brought in in 
the same way. A plate or bowl of dulce is set on the table, 
and the saucers to eat it from. Last comes the water ; and the 
tumblers are filled and refilled, some drinking from the tin cups, 
till all are satisfied. This ends the eating and drinking for the 
day. This arrangement is seldom varied from, except by omis- 
sions. Rarely is there the addition of a cup of strong, clear 
coffee, without milk, but with considerable sugar. This is taken 
at rising. Granadans do not take chocolate or coffee before ris- 
ing, as travelers say some people do. 

It is now nine. The men soon retire for the night to beds 
and benches, which pass into each other, as the naturalist says, 
by imperceptible gradations. Then is heard the voice of the 
women in praying the Rosary, a sound easily recognized after 
hearing it once. To this succeeds the furious crying of Cristi- 



476 NE W GEANADA. 

na, who fell asleep on the floor somewhere. They have hunted 
her up, and are carrying her to the room No. 10. She squalls 
half an hour, and after that nothing more is heard except the 
hum of musquitoes, the fighting of dogs, the Heating of calves 
and maternal responses, and, worse than all, the diabolic noises 
of the goats. 

Another day has passed without making any more change in 
the Valley of the Cauca than on the face of the ocean. And so 
have passed generations. If some Rip Van Winkle should 
wake from a sleep of two centuries, the only thing to surprise 
him would "be the dawn of civil and religious liberty. 

I can not better continue my picture of this family than by 
faithfully noting the actual events of a single Sabbath. On 
Saturday night the bells of the chapel rung a little — -just enough 
to say that there would be mass in the morning. The good Cura 
leaves San Vicente occasionally for a day, and comes and spends 
the Sabbath with us ; and well he might, for more than half his 
salary comes from this hacienda. I Avent to church in the morn- 
ing, as I always do when I have the opportunity. Well, in the 
first place, we had one baptism and two fractions : that is, two 
of the babes had received just enough baptism to save them from 
hell had they died before this time, but not enough for decency. 

The priest met the unbaptized at the door of mercy, or side door 
of the church. One assistant held a little plain wooden cross, 
and another a lighted candle. After the prayers he put salt in 
the babe's mouth, and went to the font, an excavated stone, on 
a pedestal, with a hole for the water to run off. Here awaited 
the other two babes. One was held on the left arm. "Put 
the head there" said the priest. The woman turned herself, so 
as to bring the head to the required spot ; the feet of the babe 
were more out of their place than ever. An exclamation of im- 
patience from the fasting Cura led an assistant to aid in placing 
the babe on the right arm. First he put spittle on the ears and 
nostrils of each ; then he completed them one by one. He took 
from his portable baptism-box a silver vial, with a rod passed 
through the silver-capped cork, and some cotton. With the rod 
he made a cross on the breast of each, and another between the 
shoulders, and wiped the oil off again with the cotton. The 
dress of one tried the Cura's patience again. He exclaimed, 



BAPTISM AND MARRIAGE. 477 

amid his prayers, "Better bring your babe naked than with a 
dress tight at the neck." I held it away with two fingers as 
well as I could. Then the babe's head was held over the font, 
face downward, and holy water was poured from the little silver 
teapot on the crown of the head. Another cross was made on 
the crown of the head with the oily rod, the head covered for a 
moment with a white cloth, and the task was done. These 
prayers would occupy a Protestant clergyman about two hours, 
but our curate dispatched them very soon. If he skipped a 
word, or pronounced it wrong, he left it for next time. 

He went back to the vestry, put on different robes, and, again 
accompanied by the cross and candle, met a marriage party at 
the door of mercy. These were more awkward than the moth- 
ers. First, the groomsman, who happened to be the husband 
of the bridesmaid, placed himself next the bride. Then the 
bridegroom tried to insinuate himself between the bride and 
bridesmaid, apparently intending to be married to one of them 
at least. When the parties were placed aright, the priest read 
them a long address, telling them, among other things, that it 
was their duty to endeavor to raise up heirs, not so much to 
their goods as to their religion, their faith, and their virtue. 
The bride, though never married before, need not excite his 
anxiety on that point. Not only were two of her children wit- 
nesses of the ceremony, but, besides, she was visibly in a state 
which is here designated by the word embarazada. I am aware 
that this detracts materially from the poetry of my picture, but 
I can not help it ; the sole merit of my sketch is its fidelity. I 
must add, then, that the older of her two children appeared to 
be three fourths black, and the younger three fourths white. 
The mother was a mulata, the other three adults of pure Afri- 
can blood. All were barefoot ; the females wore that plain dress 
which alone is permitted to rich or poor in church — the head 
covered with a shawl, the body with a dark-colored skirt (saya). 

The address through, the priest directed them to join their 
right hands. This was accomplished after much delay. When 
the priest asked the bride if she was willing to have this man 
for her husband, she made no answer. He repeated the ques- 
tion; no answer. " Say yes or no," exclaimed the priest ; she 
said " yes." Two rings were taken from the small silver tray 



478 NEW GRANADA. 

used in the mass. The priest put one on the finger of the bride- 
groom, and the latter put the other on the little finger of the 
bride. It was large enough for her thumb, and she instantly re- 
moved it to another finger. Then the priest took eight or ten 
reals, half francs, and dimes, from the tray, put them in the 
hands of the bridegroom, and he in those of the bride. In the 
course of the subsequent prayers the fasting priest fairly lost 
his patience at their awkwardness, as might be seen by the 
angry tones and snappish accent he gave his Latin. Then he 
stopped short off, and administered a rebuke in plain Castil- 
ian. 

These prayers over, their hands still joined, the priest passed 
the band — estola — of his robe round the man's wrist, and led 
the pair, followed by the other pair, to the altar. They knelt, 
and mass commenced. Two golden chains, united by a ribbon, 
were put on their necks. Two yards of white cloth, with a 
fringe, was spread over her head and his shoulders. Regularly, 
they ought to have partaken of the Eucharist. I afterward 
asked the priest why they did not ; he informed me that the 
bride's situation did not admit of the delay and fasting that 
were necessary to prepare them for that sacrament. 

Mass over, every one is at liberty to amuse himself as he 
pleases, for Sunday is a holiday, and it is a sin to work more 
than two hours, but no sin to play. At night I found that an 
extraordinary activity had prevailed in the kitchen ; fresh pork 
and chicken appeared on the dinner-table, and a bottle of aguar- 
diente. At the head sat the Cura, and a vacant space opposite 
me was at length filled by the four who had figured so conspicu- 
ously in the morning. I was not prepared for this. If I must 
eat with negroes, I will do it with a good grace, but I could 
well have spared the company of an " '■ embarazadcC bride. Dur- 
ing the dinner we had the music of two octave flutes and a 
drum. 

This was ominous of the evening ; in short, bad as was the 
weather, we had a ball. When I went for my chocolate, I found 
the good Cura, with his gown tucked up, dancing the bambuco 
with unusual grace with one of the nymphs of the pastures. As 
I was making my retreat, young Carlos, about 16, was waltzing 
with an aged manumitted slave that had been his nurse, and 



DANCING THE BUNDI. 479 

that of all his brothers and sisters before him. Later in the 
night was a scene yet more curious, as I am told. The pretty- 
little Mercedes, of 17, the white man's daughter, waltzed with 
the negro blacksmith, Miguel. He appears over 70, is very- 
tall, very grim, and is the most pious man on the plantation. 
It must have been a sight. I tried to persuade her to it again 
at a day ball, but she would consent only on the condition that 
I should first waltz with her. She even dismounted for this 
purpose, after being ready to start for home ; others seconded 
her proposition so eagerly that I could only get off by protest- 
ing that the Presbyterian Church did not permit dancing. 

In the morning, when a crevice of my window-shutter let in 
unquestionable evidence of day, I arose to see the last of the 
ball. In the front piazza, where the goats usually sleep, was 
a woman established with aguardiente and cakes for sale. She 
had brought a demijohn half full, of which remained a bottle- 
ful. She had sold to the amount of $11^20, and would have 
sold more had I been willing the night before to lend money to 
those who had none of their own to spend. 

I entered the sala, and there I saw a sight that Christy would 
give $500 or $1000 to see. The dance was the bundi, a Cho- 
co dance. Two couples, very black, and past the summer of 
life, had the floor. The four were slowly revolving about the 
room in a large circle, while each couple alternately rushed to- 
ward the centre, and receded as the other advanced. This is 
the theory, but the manner defies me. The man commences 
his centripetal movement as if he had " broken loose" and you 
feel a fear that his partner will be demolished in a collision. 
And then the ad libitum steps of his retreat ! But the music ! 
One was drumming with his fingers, the other thumping a bench 
with a broomstick with all his might, and both, with others, 
were singing " Ai ke le le" obstreperously. So furious was the 
fun, that I thought every minute some one would have to give 
in or drop dead. Set after set danced the bundi, and the last to 
leave the floor was our cook, an aged negress, who, having been 
busy in the kitchen all day, wore a camisa that had seen eight 
days' service in a kitchen without a chimney, and, further, had 
two holes worn in it just where it should be whole. 

Such orgies in the States would have presented a different re- 



480 NEW GRANADA. 

suit. The supply of rum would have been exhausted if any less 
than a barrel, for probably there was not an individual over six 
years old that did not drink. How many fights would there 
have been ? How many in the morning would have been una- 
ble to walk ? But here I saw only two (one a boy) who gave 
indications of having been drinking. I see that I am among a 
people of a different race, just as our Indians are a different race 
from ourselves in respect to alcohol. 

I must not forget to add that the bride kept up all night, and 
in the morning I saw her sitting watching the dancers with the 
gold chains still about her neck. One of her children had his 
head in her lap, the other was sitting by her side smoking a ci- 
gar. Saturday night she was up all night at a ball. To-night 
is another ball, and probably to-morrow night another. This 
is not all. She has her fasts to go through, and to commune, 
before the marriage will be so complete as to permit them to 
sleep together. I wonder how she lives through it all ! 

I urged the priest to have his mass in the morning, immedi- 
ately on the cessation of the dancing, before the dancers went 
home ; but he told me that, the day not being a fiesta, the peo- 
ple were not under obligation to hear mass, and it would be bet- 
ter to have it at the usual hour ; so most of them dispersed be- 
fore mass. 

A little before mass I saw the young gentlemen of the family 
on horseback. Each had before him, on his high-pommeled sad- 
dle, a nymph of the dance, who had come on foot the night be- 
fore. His arm was round her waist, and, that both parties might 
be equally sure of her safety, her arm was also around his neck. 
She sat sidewise. It happened, by accident no doubt, that this 
good fortune fell to just the youngest and handsomest of the be- 
witching brunettes of the whole company. 

In the mass he had the communion to administer to a man. 
In the act of administering it, he discovered a negress, or, rath- 
er, a negrita, who, instead of being on her knees as a Christian 
should be in the presence of the body of Christ, was sitting on 
the ground. He paused at once, and called out, " On your 
knees ! on your knees ! One would take you for a Protestant ! " 
and on he went with his prayer or formula, leaving me, hopeless 
Protestant, on my feet close to him. 



MY HORSE ALIAGA. 481 

A few days afterward, the pretty Mercedes, who danced witli 
the tall, grim old negro Miguel, received some letters from Quil- 
ichao, where she had been at boarding-school. She offered them 
to me to read. The first was from a schoolmate, and began, 
" Mi querida negra" — " My dear negress." I was astonished. 
She was "a white man's daughter," then; but whose? and 
what negress was her mother ? She can not be darker than a 
quadroon. As I write, I am infested with the idea that she is 
a very near relative to Don Eladio. The other letter was from 
her teacher, and contained this expression : "I hope, my dear 
negress, that you are enjoying your visit at La Bibera." Such 
terms of endearment are not new to me, but I select this case as 
Unusually authentic. 

I have witnessed some queer bathing-scenes in the Tulua. 
True, they are not so outrageous as at Honda ; but here I am 
able to guarantee the entire respectability of the parties. One 
company was Don Eladio, his wife, her sister, and two of his 
brothers. Here I first saw ladies that I esteem swim with gen- 
tlemen dressed only in a silk pocket-handkerchief. They seem- 
ed to enjoy these promiscuous swims very much, but still I fan- 
cied I could see it checkered with a half-acknowledged conces- 
sion of some impropriety in them. 

I became the owner of a horse while in this family, and it 
happened to be the first animal I ever owned. The purchase 
was not a matter of my choice, and the possession of him was 
no advantage to me, but a continual vexation, which the few 
dollars advance at which I sold him did not compensate at all. 
I gained, however, a valuable experience in the care of him. He 
was broken in before coming into my hands, but quite young. 
I named him Aliaga. I took possession of him on my birth- 
day, which he duly celebrated by knocking me down with his 
"hands" for my impertinence in interfering with two flourish- 
ing colonies of ticks — garrapatas — in his ears. He sprained 
both my wrists ; not so much, however, but that at that time I 
was able to convince him of the impropriety of his proceedings, 
to finish greasing his ears, and ride him into the river to wash 
him. From that day I was almost helpless, and it was a month 
before my wrists became entirely well. 

Aliaga was a terrible fellow to lazo. He was too fleet for 

Hh 



482 NEW GRANADA. 

that. He hated a blow from a heavy guasca as he would from 
a whip, and not without jreason, I fancy. I never knew him to 
be thus caught in the open plain but once, and then after a chase 
nearly as fatiguing as a day's journey. I own that I was some- 
what surprised — others were amazed — when I found I could go 
up to him in a herd to which he had escaped by breaking his 
bounds, and put a halter on him. None of them had ever wit- 
nessed such a feat. We had some good times together. On 
the whole, it would have been better for me to have secured a 
good attendant on my arrival at Bogota, and a horse of my own 
as soon as I arrived in this valley, where they are cheap. This 
plan would have saved more than it would cost. 

Toledo, the horse-breaker, must have led an eventful life. 
He is a Socorrano — one of the Yankees of South America. A 
quarrel, he says, with a man superior to him in influence caused 
him unjustly to be thrown into the Presidio. I am myself 
inclined to think that many worse men never get in. He 
came here, then, low in character, and deformed with a large 
goitre, which is here considered to be as great a disgrace as any 
other kind of personal ugliness, though I am told that in some 
secluded spots in the country, north of Bogota, it is thought 
rather respectable to have a good coto, or goitre. Toledo's has 
entirely disappeared by the use of the iodiferous salt of Burila. 

Toledo goes among the families about here some. He pro- 
posed to take me with him to a place to test the merits of a sort 
of combination of plantain and meat, yet unknown to me. The 
time set run by without his saying any thing farther on the 
subject. I reminded him of it, and he set another time, and yet 
a third, with the same result. We never went. I ventured to 
advise him one day to marry, and named to him a rather pretty 
Caucana that I thought would be equally benefited by the al- 
liance. With some hesitation, he acknowledged that he was 
just then thinking of marrying another. He did not think his 
choice superior ; but, in fact, there were other circumstances to 
be taken into account. To be plain, her father was very angry 
with him, and threatened to kill him if he did not marry her. 
Indeed, the old man was raving, so that the daughter could not 
live at home. On learning the facts, I told him that I thought 
her father had reason to be angry, and I was glad to see him 



LYING AND LAY BAPTISM. 483 

care so much about the poor girl's reputation. I advised him 
to marry her, but, when I came to see her, my heart almost 
failed me. She was as ugly as a monkey. 

One day Escolastica came to me to learn what day it was. I 
told her it was Tuesday. That was not what she wanted, but 
to know what the saint of the day was. I told her that we had 
no saints but God in the States, and wanted to know why she 
needed to know. She said that a child had been born near by, 
and was not likely to live, so Antonio was going to baptize it 
when they ascertained the saint for whom it was to be named. 
I wished to see it done, but they had " concluded not to have 
it done then.'''' It was done later, without my knowledge. 

I saw Antonio one day cruelly beating a poor fighting-cock 
that he had kept tied by one leg for some weeks. He had giv- 
en the fattened bird an opportunity of fighting, and it refused. 
He boxed its head till it hung down, and all around said it was 
dead. He carried it off", and when he returned he said it had 
recovered. I was told that this was not true, and it was con- 
firmed at our dinner by the remains of the cock. 

I remarked to Antonio one day a difference between English 
and French fictions. In the latter, all the best characters lie 
sometimes, while those in ours never do. 

"Therein," said he, "their fictions are more true to nature, 
for we all meet with occasions in which we have to lie." 

Don Eladio himself once was speaking to me of the oppres- 
sion that he, a Conservador, suffered from the Liberal officers 
of the district. He stated the amount of his taxes, and I was 
convinced that it was unjust. I mentioned this to an eminent 
Liberal, who told me I did wrong in believing men's assertions 
so implicitly. He urged me to see the tax-list with my own 
eyes. I ascertained afterward that Senor Vargas had overstat- 
ed the sum by some 60 per cent. 

While in this family, and when the ladies were all at Cartago, 
I had an attack of fever, which served to remind me of the bless- 
ing that my otherwise uniform good health has been to me. 

I was sleeping in the corredor on Tuesday night as usual, 
sufficiently protected from the weather and the musquitoes by 
my musquito-bar, when I was taken with a fever. In the morn- 
ing I did not leave my hammock till I decided to take an emet- 



484 NE W GKANADA. 

ic. Now if a hammock is convenient in such a case I have yet 
something to learn. After long delay, a traveling cot was put 
together in the room No. 9, and I sat up, using a "bedstead as a 
table. I opened a box of medicines, a box of those rascally 
apothecaries' weights, and Cox's " Companion to the Medicine- 
chest." While yet I had sense enough to do it, I had decided 
on a mixture of tartar emetic and ipecacuanha. Now I gazed 
at the book, then at the weights, then at the table of weights. 
I selected weights, balanced them with medicine, forced myself 
to review and re-review weights, weight-table, prescription, and 
labels, so that it took me more than half an hour to be sure that 
I should not commit a fatal error. Pilar brought me a bowl of 
warm water, set a tray by my bedside, and left me to my fate. 

At night my hammock was again hung for me, and I spent 
the night in the corredor. On Thursday morning Pepe contrived 
to hang my hammock in the room No. 9. At first this was 
thought impossible, on account of the re-entering angle. Here 
I lay, mostly dozing and insensible. Once I came to myself 
enough to see that it was dark. I recollect once I was in the 
sala, driven probably by thirst. I slept or was delirious till 3 
in the morning, when I came to consciousness. There was a 
ball in the sala. 

For three long hours I lay there, hoping that some one might 
look in upon me, but in vain. At 6 my thirst became intolera- 
ble, and I went again to the sala. The ball was at its height. 
The waltzing knew no intermission. The floor was all the time 
full, and, whenever a couple got tired, another was ready to take 
their place. The musicians were relieved in the same way. 
Here I waited till I was dizzy. It was a long time before I 
could obtain any thing. I hoped to get some warm drink, but 
was told that it would be impossible when all the servants were 
busy dancing. I had to content myself with a drink of cold 
water. 

Dr. Quintero was sent for. He came on Friday afternoon, 
but I was already some better. I had contrived to rouse my- 
self long enough to prescribe, weigh out, and take a dose of cal- 
omel and rhubarb, but with little or no advantage. As I now 
surrendered my case into the doctor's hands, he desired to know 
the doses I had taken, but I could not tell him. I neither knew 



MY SICKNESS. 485 

the size of his granos nor he the size of our grains. I told him 
that about 7500 of our grains would make one of their ordinary 
libras, or pounds, but this did not enable him to reduce their 
weights of medicine to ours. I believe that 100 of their grains 
are about equal to 77 of ours. Dr. Quintero gave me at first 
two doses of sal soda and lime-juice, and, for the next day, a 
mixture (I suppose) of decoction of cinchona and Epsom salts. 
He steadily refused any compensation for his long ride and his 
services. 

On Monday I was better, though since 3 o'clock Friday morn- 
ing I had not slept at all. My chief occupation on Sunday had 
been to try to go to sleep, and I kept quietly at it all the night, 
and, though unsuccessful, was quite comfortable. Now I began 
to think of eating again ; but what should I eat ? Neither but- 
ter, flour, meal, potatoes, rice, nor any substitute for any of these 
was to be had. For meat, I sent a man out to shoot me a mon- 
key. He shot one, but he clung to the tree, and would not fall. 
The next day I succeeded in buying a fowl, by paying what I 
should consider a fair price for an acre of land — 40 cents. At 
one cabin they found a spoonful of rice, and at another about as 
much meal, so that I made a dinner. When my fowl was fin- 
ished, I declared myself well, and took hold of tasajo again. 

In cookery, there is no effort made to develop the resources 
of the land. Tomatoes grow here without culture after once 
seeding the ground, but they never are cooked. Indeed, I sus- 
pect that, as they run wild, they become poisonous. I ate some 
from a yard, where the house had been burned and the grounds 
abandoned, and was attacked with a severe burning in my throat 
in consequence. 

I suffered much here from the want of ripe plantains and from 
the character of the beef. I think my weight varied progress- 
ively with the age of the beef. It was too bad, but I always re- 
joiced when I saw two horsemen come up to the house with their 
lazos upon a cow between them. The fatal fork — horca — was 
out before my window. One would throw his guasca over it, 
and at every movement of the poor cow, which was generally 
very angry, he would lessen the distance between her and the 
horca ; the distance, like that between us and the grave, is nev- 
er to be increased. When the victim's head is at length within 



486 NEW GEANADA. 

twenty inches of the fatal post, the other horseman dismounts 
and throws her. The lazos are released from her horns, and a 
stout hide rope — rejo — binds her head thoroughly to the post, 
and she is suffered to rise. 

This is in the afternoon. She stands there all night, and all 
the dogs in the place know that she dies ere sunrise. They as- 
semble, and Felix comes, and one or two assistants. The jug- 
ular vein is opened while she is yet standing by a sudden dex- 
trous thrust. The dogs crowd under, and lap the warm blood 
as it flows and smears them over. The poor brute falls, is un- 
bound, and dragged away from the stake. Twenty dogs sit on 
their haunches, in a circle of fifteen feet radius, with their faces 
all toward the centre where the butchers work. The skin is at 
length spread on the ground, with the rest of the animal on it. 
With busy knives they now cut off some masses for the con- 
sumption of to-day and to-morrow, and cut the rest up into 
strings. The mass rapidly diminishes, till on the skin there 
remains nothing but viscera and bones. These, too, are then 
borne off to the kitchens of the family and the peasantry, and the 
skin is pegged down to the ground and left. The gallinazos 
that have been perching round now fly down upon it, walk all 
over it, and, if any particles of meat have been left adhering 
which their bills can remove, they eat them. 

The strings of beef are carried into the corredor XIX., and 
laid on a piece of dry hide kept for that purpose. A detach- 
ment of dogs follow the first load that is brought in, through 
the sala, of course. They watch and steal if they can, while it 
is rolled in salt, and hung on poles that are kept always ready, 
between corredores XIX. and XX. The gallinazos seldom ven- 
ture here to steal it. The disgust with which unpracticed eyes 
regard these festoons of tasajo finally wears away. 

For a day or two after the " day of slaughter" (spoken of in 
the Bible as a day of feasting, James, v., 5) I ate scarce any 
thing but meat. Then, as the fare deteriorated, I lapsed almost 
into sheer vegetarianism. Once or twice I resorted to the oily 
eggs of turtles, which needed no butter to make them into an 
omelet. These the cook seasoned by guess, for not a servant 
would taste them. The prejudice against turtle-eggs is un- 
known on the Magdalena, where the bogas feast on them in their 



AGRICULTURE. 487 

season, and passengers do not disdain them when they can get 
them. The Caucan turtle does not differ perceptibly from the 
snapping-turtle of New England — Testudo serpentaria. The 
eggs are spheres of an inch in diameter, without a shell. I saw 
a single terrapin, apparently an Emys, at La Paila ; but it was 
a novelty to all who saw it, so rare are they. 

When able to be out again I went to see them clear up land 
to plant. The chief implements are the machete and a tool 
shaped like a spade, with a straight stick for a handle. It is 
lighter than a spade, and with a smaller blade than a shovel. 
They call it a pala ; I would translate it push-hoe. Axes are 
not much used here. They are long and narrow, and without 
what we call the head or poll. Of course they are very ineffi- 
cient, but it would be quite difficult to introduce our more cost- 
ly and heavier axe. 

They aim at planting just at the commencement of a rainy 
spell. In fact, they plant maize about twice a year. It takes 
about four months to ripen. I saw likewise here a plantain- 
field lately set out, the only new one I have seen. Sprouts 
broken from the base of an old stem are here set at proper dis- 
tances, say a rod or more, apart. Cane is set in the same way, 
but much closer together. A little attention should be given 
to the corn and plantains at first, that it run not up to bushes 
again, but plowing is unknown. There is a yoke of cattle be- 
longing to the family. They haul guadua and timber, if any 
be wanted. There is a cart and a water-cart, but I know not 
that either has ever been used. 

I can give no market-price for maize, rice, or any like sub- 
stance. They are sold by the palito or box-full. The size of 
the palito differs one half. I should guess maize to be about 
from 10 to 60 cents per bushel. I put dried cow beef at a dime 
per pound — called equal to 3 pounds fresh, but really a little 
less, unless very thoroughly dried. Fresh meat is sold at 90 
cents per arroba, legally equal to 27.5592125 pounds avoirdu- 
pois, or $3 27 per cwt., free of bone. Hogs, unfattened, may be 
put at $3 20 each ; young bulls at $8 ; unbroken colts, $13 ; 
broken, $20. 

But the most villainous animals ever called domestic are 
goats. The goat is able to take care of himself. He goes up 



488 NEW GRANADA. 

to the naked tops of the knolls every morning, comes down at 
night, bleats around the house, and makes himself hateful in ev- 
ery possible way. Goats climb into the oven, and jump up on 
the grinding-stone and lick off the chocolate. At night, no 
sooner are the doors all shut than they invade the corredor, 
jump up to roost on the pretil or on the table, and, when I hung 
my hammock there, would entangle themselves in my musqui- 
to-net, and were an unutterable abomination to me. I often 
thought that the distinction between sheep and goats in the Bi- 
ble was well put. Sheep are rarer because they need care, but 
they seem to be healthy here. 

They say that the tobacco of this region is as good as that of 
Havana. I do not rely upon that opinion. I do not believe 
that better coffee can be raised than in some parts of this valley. 
The cacao-tree is said to be indigenous to the Cauca. Indigo 
might be raised here in any quantity, and cochineal. Both these 
articles will pay transportation, but they require too much labor 
and care to suit the disposition of the Caucanos. 

What more could Nature do for this people, or what has she 
withholden from them ? What production of any zone would be 
unattainable to patient industry, if they knew of such a virtue ? 
But their valley seems to be enriched with the greatest fertility 
and the finest climate in the world only to show the miraculous 
power of idleness and unthrift to keep a land poor. Here the 
family have sometimes omitted their dinner just because there 
was nothing to eat in the house. Maize, cacao, and rice, when 
out of season, can hardly be had for love or money ; so this val- 
ley, a very Eden by nature, is filled with hunger and poverty 
from Popayan to Antioquia. 



SETTING OUT FOR THE WOODS. 489 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

THE PASTUEES IN THE FOEEST. 

Sadden Start.— Wardrobe for the Woods. — Plan and Company.— Barleycorn 
Boldness. — Night in Woods and Rain. — Departed Spirits. — El Chorro. — 
Thermometer broken. — A Country all aslant. — Las Playas. — Rancho of Cen- 
tury-plant. — Substitute for Cords. — Jicaramata. — Guavito. — Threat of Famine. 
— Sabbath-day's Journey. — Routed by Hunger. — Snakes - . — Treasure-hunting. 

I had been to Chaqueral to see Isabel Gomez as much as any 
thing. I was returning to La Paila, where I was then stop- 
ping, when at the river of Las Caiias I met my host, Senor 
Modesto Flojo, accompanied by Dr. Quintero. I was surprised 
to learn that they were in pursuit of me. A project had been 
hatched up to hunt for cinchona in the forests, high up the Riv- 
er Tulua. It was now Friday afternoon, and it was proposed 
to reach Portazuela that night, and La Ribera next day, in time 
to make all necessary arrangements so as to take to the woods 
early on Sunday morning. To this I would not assent, but 
agreed to the plan, with two modifications. We were to leave 
La Ribera on Monday, and not to travel the succeeding Sab- 
bath ; and paper must be taken for me to collect plants in. 

All this was assented to. I had an hour at La Paila to ar- 
range matters for a week's sojourn in the forest. I took a fa- 
tigue-dress, hunting-shirt, hammock, flannel night-dress, encau- 
chado, bayeton, a little Greek Testament, a needle-book, pocket- 
compass, thermometer, machete, pocket-knife, comb, and a ream 
or two of printing-paper. All this, except the paper, I accommo- 
dated about my saddle. The object of the expedition was a 
secret. Some of the party had mules at pasture that they wished 
to see ; the others went with them to have a hunt. 

After leaving La Paila, we stopped in Guavito at the house 
of Bernabe, the negro judge, who was skinning a goat ; then, 
again, at Murillo, and at 7 P.M. were seated at a comfortable 
dinner at Dr. Quintero's table at Portazuela. There was other 
company there, and the house was full. My hammock was in- 



490 NEW GRANADA. 

geniously hung "by passing the ropes over the tops of two oppo- 
site doors from the sala into inner rooms, and tying to them two 
cobs of maize, so that they could not draw through. My weight 
rendered the opening of the doors impossible till I rose. 

In the morning, the thongs of raw hide to tie my hammock 
over the pockets of my cojinetes had disappeared. Dr. Quin- 
tero charged the theft upon the dogs of a guest. " My dogs 
do not eat rejo," said their owner. Dr. Quintero, who hap- 
pened to be cutting raw hide at the instant, threw a strip to 
one of the accused, which pleaded guilty by swallowing it in- 
stantly ; not a word was said. 

After breakfast we all went to La Eibera. Here they told 
me that they had again concluded to start on Sunday morning. 
"Very well," I said; "leave me a guide, and I will come on 
after you on Monday." Finding me firm, they concluded to 
have a hunt on Sunday, and start as agreed ; so I rested, ac- 
cording to the commandment, and the party, some of whom had 
slept in Tulua, met and killed a deer. Damian, the young law- 
yer, whose energy makes amends for Don Modesto's slackness, 
had joined them, and had pledged himself to eat the hides and 
hoofs of all the deer they killed that day. They were so pleased 
with their success that they excused him from the task. The 
mode of hunting is to post themselves in ambush near where 
deer are likely to pass when pursued, and wait while the thick- 
et is beaten with dogs and peons. 

At night our company was complete, and at daylight in the 
morning we were on our way. There were in all 11 of us, viz., 
Don Modesto Flojo, commander-in-chief; Damian Caicedo, his 
wife's nephew; Miguel and Manuel Vicente, two brothers-in- 
law ; Pepe and Chepe Sanmartin, his sons-in-law — two smart 
lads, though but 15 and 13; Dr. Quintero ; a Seiior Tascon; 
Miguel (a guide) ; and Lorenzo, Don Modesto's concertado, and 
my famous guide on another occasion. 

We had barely started, when Don Modesto and Tascon turn- 
ed back, and we advanced more slowly to give them a chance 
of rejoining. We wound our way along the side of an enor- 
mous hill, called the Picazo, at a very high elevation, but far be- 
low the summit. A few miles farther brought us to the end of 
the grass — llano — at Las Minas. Here we stopped and made 



COURAGE UP. 491 

a delicious breakfast on yesterday's venison. We had not dis- 
mounted ere Don Modesto and Tascon came in, bringing with 
them the object of their solicitude, La Pechona. She, as well 
as they, was in spirits, or, rather, a pint and a half of spirits 
were in her. Hidden in the cojinetes of Tascon and Manuel Vi- 
cente were two of her frail sisters, whose company greatly ani- 
mated the day's ride. 

From Las Minas our route for several miles was upward, till 
we came to oak trees. We had a road from which I did not 
see any other diverge that did not enter it again. With every 
obstacle the spirits of Sefior Flojo seemed to rise. Now and 
then his shout would ring through the woods, "Don't you flinch, 
my dears, for here go I !" I had been unwilling to expose my 
Aliaga to the hardships of the journey, and had left him in 
charge of Dr. Quintero's sisters, and was mounted on a fine 
young mare of Don Modesto's. He seemed very unwilling that 
I should favor her, but I persisted in dismounting whenever a 
thick tree or such obstacle lay in the road up hill. Once or 
twice, at an ugly spot, he would call out, " Whoever dismounts 
here shall not pass again for a man till he has been searched." 
I dismounted all the same. 

High up among the oaks we stopped at a contadero to rest. 
The day was delightful. Up we went again, and soon came to 
trouble. Even this road had its callejones. The sumpter mule 
was walking above a deep one that was too narrow for her load 
to pass in it, and she fell in. They loosened her load, and 
dragged her off it by the tail down to a spot where they could 
set her on her feet. Then they got her and the load out of the 
callejon, changed her for Manuel Vicente's mule, and we went on. 

We straggled very much. We halted at another contadero, 
where we attained the greatest altitude for the day, and I went 
back on foot to see if the boys and Tascon were not lost. Then 
came an unintermitted descent for an hour or more. A roaring 
stream was heard at the bottom. It was Rio San Marcos, a 
branch of the Tulua, which we crossed, and at 4 we came to the 
Tulua at Platanal. Here is the first we have seen of the Tulua, 
which, even up here, would be a pretty good stream to ford. Ap- 
parently it rattles over a stony bed almost till it reaches the very 
Cauca, without becoming quiet as do the streams farther north. 



492 NEW GRANADA. 

A council was held, and it was decided to go no farther. We 
had dinner to get, and disposition's for night to make. Platanal 
is an open spot a few rods square, on the right hank of the Tu- 
lua. I had some plants to put in paper, and among them a bush 
Passiflora. I lost the most beautiful Inga to-day I ever saw 
growing wild. Here I discovered that they had failed to bring, 
as they promised, some ground maize. For vegetables they had 
green plantains, and I made a miserable dinner. Two men went 
back and built a fence across the road to keep the mules from 
returning. This is generally done of nights, even when travel- 
ing in the highway, where there are no pastures or pens. 

The weather was threatening. Some united together and 
made a tent of their bayetones, sleeping under it almost without 
bed or clothing. Stems of cana brava, a grass as large and 
straight as fishing-poles, served very well for a frame- work. Don 
Modesto and others slept wrapped in their bayetones under the 
open sky. All wore their day-clothes. I hung my hammock 
between two trees, and passed another rope between them over 
my hammock, and on this hung my encauchado, so that the 
edges of it were lower than my hammock. Beneath me I put 
my saddle, paper, and day-clothes. I had sewed up the head- 
hole in my bayeton, and used it for a blanket. I went to sleep 
looking up into the gloomy sky, but was soon waked up by 
Dr. Quintero, who told me I must not expose my head to irra- 
diation ; so I drew it in under my roof. 

I woke at sunrise, and it was raining. As yet I was dry, but 
how should I dress ? A knotty question. The tent offered a 
solution. I reached under my hammock, and got my hat and 
my clothes. I then sprang out, and ran "between the drops" 
to the tent, and dressed there. Meanwhile a cup of chocolate 
was brought me — a small silver cup, that would hold half a gill. 
I had stipulated for a silver-rimmed cocoanut-shell for my al- 
lowance, but this morning they could not make enough in the 
rain. Tascon, Manuel Vicente, and Miguel the peon came in 
with the horses, and brought with them a venomous snake that 
they had killed. 

Died in the night La Pechona and both her sisters ; cause, 
rapid consumption, aggravated by the rain in the night. They 
yielded up the last drop of their spirit about daybreak. Don 



COURAGE GONE. 493 

Modesto is a sincere mourner, and Tascon disconsolate. While 
we were preparing to mount, the bereaved attended to the obse- 
quies of all that remained of the dear departed. They wrote 
not even resurgam on their monument, lest their resurrection 
might occur before our return here. 

The bereavement had a wonderful effect on Don Modesto. 
The daring, jubilant leader of yesterday was no more. No more 
we heard the cry, "Don't flinch, my dears, for here go I;" 
now it would mean, " Wherever I go a child can ride." We 
soon had an ugly brook to cross. Dr. Quintero had to go back 
to help him down the bank. We were still on the right bank 
of the Tulua, ; some time after passing this branch of it we 
came out to clear land again. We gathered on a jutting knoll, 
and looked down on our camp of last night. The rain had 
ceased, and the sun was coming out. The Tulua, here seemed 
to bend its course more to the northward ; it came down from 
the east between steep grass-covered hills. Above us were the 
heights of Tiemble-cul. 

I would not think of riding my little mare up there. I tried 
to drive her, but, as I was in advance of the party, she would 
not go. I led her a while, but it was so slippery that I feared 
falling under her feet. I finally exchanged her for a gun, and 
after an amazing climb I was at the top of Tiemble-cul. You 
could see from here the settlements in a place between Tulua 
and Buga. It seemed an hour before the party came in sight. 
I managed to finish drying my clothes in the sun first, but had 
hard work to keep warm the while. 

Level and descending ground now brought us through a 
small piece of woods to El Chorro. Here was a house, kept at 
present by a boy named Ursulo. Our luxuries here were a 
roof, milk, and arracachas. I cooked some rice, made sirup from 
panela, and ate. I dried my hammock, and dried all my paper 
over a fire, and obtained many new plants. We staid all day, 
and they tried to kill a deer. Down nearer the river the hill- 
sides were covered with paths of the tapir, here called danta. 
We had no hopes of shooting one of them, as they remain hid 
all day, and the river was too far below us to permit our thinking 
of descending. Chorro means a rill or torrent. A cold stream 
rolled down the hill-side a few rods beyond the house, which 



494 NEW GRANADA. 

yielded us the water we needed. The house is on comparative- 
ly a level spot ; that is, a cask might stand safely near it with- 
out any danger of its rolling down to the Tulua. Back of it 
the ground rose up to an unknown height. Part of the slope 
was covered with wax-palm (Ceroxylon) and a thicket of other 
plants. 

Before dark we were informed that somehody was coming. 
It was like picking up a boat at sea. We all came out of the 
house. It was Don Antonio Besero, with two peons. He owns 
mules farther up at Las Playas, and had come to-day from Las 
Minas, where he camped last night. The peons "built a fire out 
doors. Within, we had a candle-end and a pack of cards. 

Before breakfast, on Wednesday, I went up to the palms. 
On my return I found my thermometer broken, an irreparable 
loss, as it needed comparing with a standard thermometer. No 
one knew how it happened. Don Modesto took the death of 
La Pechona no harder than I the loss of my thermometer. I 
ate no breakfast. But we must march. We went up the riv- 
er, but also receded from it, going obliquely up an immense ad- 
ditional ascent. We met some bulls that we wished farther off, 
or on ground better for sport. 

At length our path lay along an immense inclined plane that 
seemed terminated by the sky above and the river below. So 
steep was the hill, and so narrow the path, that they would not 
suffer me to ride for a long way ; so we all walked, leading our 
horses. In this position we halted with a snake in front of us, 
which was shot as a matter of precaution. I could neither 
carry him on nor examine him for fangs, so we all voted him 
venomous, and left him. At length we had to descend two 
thirds of the way to the river. I think it took us an hour of 
steep zigzag ; then we came to a brook, and we all halted. 
Granadinos rarely drink without first taking dulce. A piece 
of panela was produced, and cut with a machete into inch cubes, 
or larger pieces. A totuma was taken from a peon's hat, rinsed, 
and passed round with water from the chilly rill. 

Again we were on the still worse slope of almost a precipice, 
but not yet dangerous, so I kept my saddle. In one place I 
found it necessary to pause to adjust my hat in so critical a 
place that a peon told me afterward that he "prayed the holy 



CAMP-BUILDING. 495 

Virgin that I might not fall." Here we saw several giant vul- 
tures sailing through the air. I ask the name, and they tell 
me it is the buitre. I ask if it is not the condor, and they 
know no such bird. I can hardly doubt but it is Vultur Gry- 
phus, the largest bird that flies. His wings are remarkable ; 
they have several feathers projecting beyond the, rest like ex- 
tended fingers. The scenery that passes under his eye is, like 
himself, gloomy, solitary, and gigantic. Cows, horses, and mules 
have nothing to fear from him while well and able to offer re- 
sistance, but calves and colts, when very young, are blinded 
and destroyed. 

We continued descending till the rain threatened to pour in 
upon us. We held a council in a rocky ravine, and voted to 
camp, but Don Antonio finally persuaded us to advance to Las 
Playas, where we crossed the Tulua, here about two feet deep. 
Here we built, on Don Antonio's land, a rancho of the leaves 
of Fourcroya (pita, cabuya), the best thing we could find, although 
the leaves are very heavy, being 3 or 4 feet long, 5 inches wide, 
and nearly an inch thick. Each leaf has a notch cut in it, to 
hang it across a horizontal pole, or bejuco, or cord of fique, pass- 
ing along the slender rafters. The plant grows here in abun- 
dant quantities, so that this region may yet export from it a 
cordage like Manilla. Fique is another name for its fibre. 

While the camp was building another venomous snake was 
killed, of which I saved the head. I hung my hammock under 
the rancho, leaving room enough for the rest of them beneath 
me. We remained all Thursday at Las Playas. They hunted, 
but killed nothing but a pava — Penelope — not so large as a 
common fowl, and two small birds. Here I found an Agave, I 
think, much more like the century-plant of Mexico than the 
Fourcroya is. From my seeing it in but one place among the 
settlements, I infer that it is indigenous ; still they call it Ca- 
buya de Mejico. Don Antonio has a great horror of heresy, so 
that our debates on religious points served to make the time 
pass where, for want of house and candle-ends, the other game 
(cards) could not be played so well. 

I asked him whether the Virgin could be in two places at 
once. He thought it possible. In a thousand places? He 
thought not. If a thousand persons were talking to her at once, 



496 NEW GEANADA. 

could she hear them all, and know every thing that every one 
did ? He thought not ; but why all these questions ? " For 
this reason," I replied : " God is omniscient and omnipresent ; 
therefore, if all the world were praying to Him at once, he would 
be with them all, and know every thing that they said, thought, 
and felt ; but if too many prayed to the Virgin at once, I feared 
that some of them would lose their trouble ; therefore I thought 
it most prudent to pray to God in the first instance." Before 
Besero had finished his answer, I fear I was so far asleep as to 
assent to it. 

On Friday morning the others were driven to make inroads 
on the rice, which had thus far been reserved to me. They tried 
the experiment of frying dry rice in lard, of which they had 
brought a bladderful, just as Scotch snuff is elsewhere put up. 
Dry rice fries harder and harder, if any thing. When they aban- 
doned it, I added water, tore the two small birds in bits, and 
made a stew for the starving dogs. Hunters do not think raw 
meat agrees with dogs until they become accustomed to it. 

After breakfast we recrossed to the north bank of the Tulua, 
and pursued our way up to Jicaramata. We camped early, but 
in a place where Fourcroya is too scarce to build a good rancho. 
I had to clear a spot to hang my hammock between two trees. 
Each day the process of drying paper by a fire built for the pur- 
pose is becoming a more severe task, but upon this depends all 
my hope of bringing out my plants. Here a deer was shot. It 
was probably Cervus Peronei, similar to C. Virginiana, but con- 
siderably smaller. We made it last us two meals, and gave the 
dogs nothing but the viscera, the bones, and, lastly, the skin. 
We had salt, and I cooked my own dinner on a spit, and found 
it delicious. I salted another piece, and plastered it against a 
tree, out of dogs' reach : this was my breakfast. I am so far 
driven by necessity that I now claim my share of the cheese 
they take with the chocolate. I think, in a day or two, I could 
eat green plantains, or even sancocho. 

On Saturday, Dr. Quintero, Dr. Damian Caicedo, Miguel and 
Manuel Vicente, and a peon, went with me to Guavito, the in- 
nermost pasture. The continual slopes toward the river, which 
hitherto have rarely allowed an acre of level ground in a square 
mile, seem to have so far intermitted, that from Jicaramata up 



JICARAMATA. 497 

the land is as level as in ordinary rough New England towns. 
Here we passed a spot that might make a fine farm after drain- 
ing off one or two pools — lagunetas. But, at the ordinary rate 
of South American progress, it must yet he a thousand years he- 
fore a wheel-road will be made here. 

A thick wood intervened between here and our Ultima Thule, 
Guavito. We had great difficulty in finding the almost obso- 
lete path to this pasture, which, distant as it is from human hab- 
itation, is probably only two thirds up to the dividing ridge be- 
tween the Cauca and the Magdalena. Guavito seems to be left 
to grow over without burning off. These pastures are valuable, 
because mules brought up here have surer feet and harder hoofs. 
This of Guavito is of less value, as beasts of prey infest it more. 
Still farther up we can see the naked summits of hills far above 
us, apparently destitute of rock as is the ground where we are. 
Those, however, are paramo, and not, like these, kept open by 
fire. Wild cows are said to live there unowned. 

Here we held a council. Miguel and Manuel Vicente built a 
rancho in the woods ; Quintero, Damian, and I hunted for cin- 
chona ; and the peon went back for the rest of the party, who 
had staid behind to hunt. After some hours in the woods be- 
tween Guavito and Jicaramata, we went back to meet the oth- 
ers. We met part of them halfway, bringing part of the things. 
Don Modesto was sick, and would go no farther. Tascon and 
Lorenzo, the peon, were to stay with him. We all agreed to 
turn back, and came hungry to a camp where there was little 
to eat. 

A new council was held, and the state of our larder was such 
that I advised without scruple a retreat on Sunday morning to 
El Chorro. I stipulated, however, that a peon should bring on 
my horse, etc., and allow me to spend the day on foot and alone. 
This night the rancho, which had been enlarged, admitted my 
hammock, and my encauchado was made part of the roof of it. 

Sunday I spent alone, but not in a state of physical rest. I 
enjoyed the day better than many others. Only once the party 
behind me lost their way, and I had to direct them, from an op- 
posite hill, by shouts and signs, till they at length reached a 
path. I was so lightly clad that I feared, also, some danger of 
being emparamado, or benumbed; but I tripped rapidly over the 

1 1 



498 NEW GRANADA. 

coldest part of the way. I arrived before 5 at El Chorro, and 
found Besero and his peones there. The others came in soon 
after, having abandoned one saddle-beast, which was brought 
home some weeks after, as I have been told. 

On Monday morning we ate every thing except a little choc- 
olate and perhaps some dried beef. The fried arracachas seem- 
ed exquisite to a famishing man. They tasted like potatoes 
sliced raw and fried. I never have tasted them so cooked ex- 
cept when starving, but I judge they might be good even to a 
pampered palate. I was off by 8. We had intended to start 
at sunrise, but, after making the best arrangements possible, ev- 
ery thing fell through, and the last of the party did not leave 
till 9. The roads were horrible, for it had rained. At Tiem- 
ble-cul I dismounted, and walked to Platanal. I rode to Rio 
San Marcos, and thence walked to within a league of Las Mi- 
nas. In the ascent from San Marcos, Pepe's horse gave out, 
was left, and probably eaten up that night. The young rider 
proved a smart walker, and held out bravely. He rode my 
horse some, now one of the freshest of the lot. 

All day we never united : we were routed. In the end, the 
dismounted Pepe, with Dr. Quintero and Tascon, came out ahead. 
Next came Don Modesto, Chepe, and myself. We passed the 
Picazo at dark, and before 8 we were at La Bibera. The re- 
mainder came in an hour after us. Those who accompanied the 
baggage-mule had the worst of it. Her load was but empty 
dishes, an empty saddle or two, and things that riders found 
their horses too weak to carry, but they say she fell about twen- 
ty times. Four silver cups, that ought to have staid at home, 
came in ruined. Amid all this, however, La Pechona was not 
forgotten ; the three bottles came in unscathed. Such was the 
end of the expedition to Jicaramata. 

I made another excursion, hoping to reach the oaks east of 
Las Minas by passing El Yesal, the gypsum place. In this 
I failed, and the fruit of the expedition was a fine equis or 
x-snake, so called because he seems marked over with that let- 
ter. He was a little less than three feet long, has formidable 
fangs, and a formidable reputation. As I could find no' better 
place for so dangerous a trophy, I was obliged to tie the head 
to my hat-band. A negro spied it on my way home, and wish- 



SNAKES. 499 

ed to buy it to make medicine of. He offered me $3 20 for it. 
[The New York Lyceum has it.] 

I must not forget to add an incident that occurred at La 
Paila with the head from Las Playas. I was at work barefoot 
in my room ; the wind blew the head off the table, and I trod 
on it. I raised my foot, and found the head hanging to it by 
one of the fangs, and the other broken off, whether in my foot 
I know not. Fortunately, my first terror at being bitten by a 
venomous snake had long been past, and though ever after I 
feared the possibility of a bite more than before, the terror con- 
sequent on a bite, I hope, will never be so great again. I never 
even mentioned this accident to the family. 

Speaking of snakes, the account they give of one here is 
really a little the most horrible story, I think, ever invented. 
It ties its tail firmly round a bush, and you are not apt to 
see it till you are within its reach. So long as you stand there 
you are unharmed, but the moment you try to fly, quick as 
lightning the miscreant whips his venomous, hooked, and hor- 
ribly strong fangs into you. Of course I do not believe a word 
of it. 

I made one other excursion in the vicinity of Tulua. This 
was in quest of a silver mine, of which there is an old tradition, 
back of the Tablazo, east of the town of Tulua. To reach this 
from La Ribera I passed through the town of Tulua. It stands 
south of the River Tulua, and so you cross that rather violent 
river on a high, long, narrow bridge with no railings. It con- 
sists of hewed beams laid side by side from shore to shore, 
sometimes with earth laid on them. When one of them breaks 
the others are crowded together, so that the width of this bridge 
is variable. At its widest some will never ride across it, 
though narrow bridges are generally safe in the daytime, if 
your horse be not blind of one eye. 

Of the town of Tulua I know little. I have been six times 
through it, but never dismounted in it. It is a paved town, the 
cabecera of a canton, and the distrito has a population of 4352. 
The Tablazo is an elevated grassy plain, not so high as the Pi- 
cazo opposite to it, but of many hundred acres. The deep dell 
back of it may contain silver, but to me the boulders look much 
like those any where else. I had a pleasant day, however, but 



500 NEW GEANADA. 

paid for it in a terrible time for getting home in the dark and 
rain. There is here, as elsewhere, a great deal of credulity in 
relation to mines and treasures ; and, in this respect, it is a 
misfortune for a country really to contain, as this does, much 
hidden treasure, and also, as there are here, rich mines of gold 
and silver unexplored. I do not count that of Tablazo among 
them. 



CHAPTER 

BUGA AND PALMIRA. 



Eice-fields. — Mud-holes. — San Pedro. — Buga. — Another Horse Story. — Zonza, 
the Beautiful. — Rio Guaves. — Cerrito. — Church. — Care of Toes in School. — 
Herran Administration. — Constitution of 1843. — Mosquera Administration. — 
Water-mill for Cane. — Poor rich Family. — Irish Gentleman and Granadan 
Wife. — How to spoil a Dinner. — Palmira. — Full Jail. — Arithmetic. — A Fast. 
— LL.D.'s turned Traders. — Cockroach Story. — Mud, Palms, and Indigenous 
Cacao. — Ferry. 

Up the river we go again. It was nearly dark when we left 
Tulua for San Pedro. I have since passed that road again in 
the night, and all that these two transits would enable me to 
say is, that the crossings of muddy streams make it terrible in 
the dark. They are, some of them, if not indeed most of them, 
artificial water-courses — acequias — made for irrigation, and to 
convey water to houses. The proprietors of acequias are, of 
course, bound by law to bridge them, but they do it so rarely 
that I do not now recollect more than one or two that have a 
bridge which can be passed. If we rode rhinoceroses or hippo- 
potami it would be different ; but to be bespattered by your 
neighbors, to bespatter them, to bespatter yourself, and, worst of 
all, to fear being absolutely ingulfed by the criminal negligence 
of rich landholders, is trying to patience. 

Passing by daylight over this road made a different impres- 
sion. There were other things besides the mud-fords to notice, 
for the country is really beautiful ; and, say your worst of the 
mud, I have never lost a horse in it, which circumstance con- 
vinces me that I have dreaded it too much. Here I saw an 
arrozal or rice-field, the only one I ever saw, so rare is the cul- 



HACIENDA OP SAN PEDEO. 501 

ture of rice in South America. This piece was small, but the 
structure of it surprised me not a little. It was an absolute 
plane, inclining slightly to the west. On the upper side was an 
acequia, that sent over the field a sheet of water about one eighth 
of an inch thick, that formed no channels and covered all the 
ground. A ditch was made at the lower end to receive the wa- 
ter again and carry it off. 

Opposite the little town of San Pedro is a hacienda, to which 
my mind runs back with delight. I am sorry I have not had 
better opportunities to become acquainted with the peculiarly 
amiable family that occupy it. Here, as at La Ribera, the la- 
dies sat at the table with us. Our dining-room was the back 
corredor ; my bedroom was the other, with my hammock ex- 
tended from a window-grating to a pillar of the roof. A curious 
screen separated the dining-room from one of the nicest gardens 
in all the country. I did not at once discover that it was a 
thick matting of a Passiflora with a very small flower. There 
are several such species here. This formed a dense curtain, 
capable of shutting out the sun and admitting the air — a peren- 
nial veil of leaf and flower. 

Directly under the eaves of the house ran a cheerful rill in a 
channel of burned bricks. Water for the table was dipped up 
at the upper end. The plates, as taken from the table, were set 
in it farther down. Most operations which are done in dishes 
and pails of water in our kitchens are here done in the acequia, 
if there be one. There seemed to be a mystery about this ace- 
quia, for I could not tell where this water could come from. The 
house was west of the road, and the water must cross it ; but, 
apparently, the house stands higher than any point of the road 
that I could see. I have spoken already of the acequeros' skill, 
the results of which here puzzle me. 

In the morning we were astonished with a breakfast at six ! 
It is little short of a miracle, being, perhaps, two hours earlier 
than any other I ever heard of in all the land. The family can 
be no ordinary people certainly. Here I filled a bag with or- 
anges, which were as abundant and as good as man could de- 
sire. They have also cocoanut-trees, which, if they do not yet 
bear, are majestic ornaments, and keep up a very pretty music 
in the night-breeze by the rustle of their leaflets. They need 
twelve years here to grow in. 



502 NEW GRANADA. 

We were off earlier than most families could have sent us 
away with chocolate only. A little above, I saw some trees 
rather taller and more slender than most apple-trees. I thought 
at first they were deformed by dozens of hornets' nests. I look- 
ed again, and really the supposed nests were the fruit. It was 
the guanabana (Anona muricata), called in Jamaica sour-sop. 
The flesh is firm, slightly fibrous, so as to eat beautifully with 
a fork. Elegance of eating is a high recommendation to a fruit. 
However delicious the flavor, you can not enjoy a fruit that 
smears fingers and face, clogs the teeth, or keeps you on the 
alert to separate eatable from uneatable. The guanabana is as 
large as the largest pine-apple, slightly acid, and not quite sweet 
enough, and with no aromatic flavor. The pulp separates in 
morsels, and is free from the rind and seeds. Two other Ano- 
nas are to be mentioned. The A. Chirimolia, the chirimoya, is 
smaller, of less regular shape, more fragile rind and tender pulp 
than the guanabana. It is by many reckoned the best fruit in 
the world, and by others rejected in disgust. Its flavor is al- 
most exactly that of its congener of the Valley of the Mississip- 
pi, the Anona or Asimina triloba, there called papaw. The An- 
ona squamosa is of the size of a large apple, much like the chi- 
rimoya in physical constitution, but inferior in flavor. They 
call it anon. The guanabana, which I prefer, is undervalued 
here, just as our Northern papaw is abandoned to negroes and 
opossums. 

After picking from a guanabana all I wanted, dropping seeds 
along the road for a mile, and eating with my fingers without 
unfitting them to handle white satin, I threw away the rest. 
Soon after ordinary breakfast-time, we were rattling, in a long 
single file, over the pavements of Buga, the capital of the prov- 
ince of Cauca. After turning various corners, the head of the 
column rode into a house, and we all followed. We dismount- 
ed in the patio, and soon were seated in a parlor more civilized 
than usual. I received no introductions, but the conversation 
showed that I was known to them. In explanation, I was told 
that one of the young LL.D.'s with whom I crossed the mount- 
ain was a cousin to them. Some dulce and water were served, 
but no cigars offered. Per contra, they had some curious arti- 
cles of vertu, images, etc., made of tobacco : they were exposed 



MODE OF WASHING CLOTHES. 503 

to the inconvenience of needing to be moistened with aguardiente 
from time to time. I always knew that tobacco and rum were 
allies. On the table were books, and a portfolio of drawings, 
and guitar music. All these looked strange to me, so long had 
I forgotten them. 

Buga is on the right bank of the Piedras River, a broad, shal- 
low stream, over which they think of throwing a foot-bridge of 
guadua. It has less volume than the Buga-la-Grande and the 
Tulua, and nearly the same as the Paila. A vacant space of 
stony ground here separates the town from the river bank. The 
shore is lined with washerwomen and garments spread out to 
dry. Yankees complain of the mode of washing here, but with 
little justice, I suspect. Steuart describes them as " thumping 
and squeezing their linen upon the broad smooth stones, mak- 
ing the collar and wrist buttons rain down like hail into the 
stream." True, they wash without tubs and kettles, and do not 
scald their clothes ; but I do not know that they injure them, 
and, when a man tells about buttons hailing down, I am in- 
clined to think he exaggerates. They do not know our way of 
rubbing, nor do I know that it is better. If a man must have 
his clothes washed as they were in his mother's kitchen, let him 
do it with his own hands. 

Just out of Buga, toward the river, I noticed a beautiful bush, 
with large red flowers, bright green leaves, and sharp thorns, as 
I found to my cost. It proved to be a cactate flower, and was 
probably a Pereskia, a leafy Genus in that leafless Order. A 
few miles farther south are three or four houses, mere huts. We 
will select one of them, on the west and lower side of the road, 
and take seats and rest in the piazza while I tell you a story. 

I swam a horse across the Cauca above here, between Vijes 
and Cerrito once, and before the horse reached Cerrito he ap- 
peared tired out. There I spent two days, and the animal fared 
well. The next day I came down here, less than fifteen miles. 
Some miles above the poor horse flagged. I thought he could 
not possibly be tired till I had punished him with a severity 
that makes me ache now. He so far gave out that I was 
obliged to dismount and drive him. The poor fellow knew that 
his home was forty miles below, and probably despaired living 
to reach it again ; so when he came to a narrow lane (you see 



504 NEW GEANADA. 

fences are more common here than "below), he suddenly turned 
into it, and tried to run away. Poor fellow, he could not run ; 
a cripple could have overtaken him. I brought him hack, but 
did not strike him for trying to run. 

So I came to this house, and the occupant was in the yard. 
I asked him what ailed my horse. He said, He is destroncado. 
The word means maimed, but he meant exhausted — not tired, 
but used up as if by a typhoid fever. He took him in ; we un- 
saddled him. He went and brought some cane. I drew my 
machete, which was tied to the saddle under the flap, and cut 
up the cane. He could still eat. Then I walked to Buga to 
get advice, and a horse if I could. They told me I could prob- 
ably get him to San Pedro next day by going most of the way 
on foot, and very slowly. I dined at Buga. At dark I was 
back. I cut up all the cane the horse would eat. I retired, 
hanging my hammock in the little room that served as bedroom 
for the man, his wife, and their children. 

In the morning I cut more cane. They told me to wait till 
after breakfast, and let him eat. I breakfasted on fried eggs 
and fried plantains, with a good cup of chocolate. When I of- 
fered to pay them, they refused ; I protested, and the woman 
consented to take half a dime to pay for the eggs she bought 
for me at the house opposite. I urged, but the utmost they 
would receive was a dime. Bless them ! 

I mounted my horse at the Piedras, and rode through the 
back streets of Buga. I passed a place where they had killed 
a cow, and were pinning the hide to the ground. On the fence 
were half a dozen gallinazos, waiting for a chance to pick up a 
morsel of meat ; then they looked at my horse, and, by a wick- 
ed leer, seemed to insinuate that I was trying to cheat them. 
Somehow I felt guilty, for they looked at poor Rozinante with 
the eye of a gratified connoisseur. I could have knocked them 
off the fence with a good will. 

" Step by step goes a great ways," says a Spanish proverb. 
San Pedro, prompt hospitality, sympathy, and a fresh horse, 
were before me. And I was not disappointed, although I do 
not even know the name of the good people who live there. I 
sent the horse they kindly loaned me back from La Paila by 
mail. Weeks afterward, I was riding home from the Medio, 



THE LOVELIEST SPOT ON EAETH. 505 

when Pepe Sanmartin overtook me, and asked me " if I knew 
what horse I was riding." I told him I did not. " Well," said 
he, "it is the caballo destroncado." 

We left Buga about 11. By 1 we had crossed the Zonza, a 
small river, with a few houses south of it. Here the sun be- 
came intolerable ; and had the day been as long as in northern 
summers, it would have been nearly as severe. We stopped at 
a venta, where a billiard-table occupied the sala. I went back 
to the river to swim. The water then, about 2 P.M., was at 
nearly 100° F. It had a strange effect on coming out. I was 
dressing myself in the shade, and I found it too cold. I had 
to step into the sun to warm myself. I started a little be- 
fore the others, and stopped to see them building a church with 
adobe. In all New Granada I have seen no new church in the 
process of construction except at Zonza and Overo. All the 
others are either finished or abandoned. I rode on, and stopped 
on a gentle rise to wait for the company. Never have I seen, 
and never expect to see, in this mortal world, another place so 
beautiful. The ground was gently swelling ; clumps of trees 
were scattered here and there in every direction. The Quin- 
dio range in the east terminated in plains at some miles distant, 
and the river-forest, too, had retired far from the road. 

Nestled in the distant hills we could see the buildings of a 
hacienda that bore the appropriate name of Paradise Vale — Val 
Paraiso — just high enough to make a perceptible difference in 
climate. Much of the land about here is irrigated, and, there- 
fore, of perennial greenness. With ordinary diligence, three 
crops of maize, and four of many things, could be raised here. 
Few things besides wheat, potatoes, spices, and maple-sugar 
could not be raised here. Bolivar, too, was struck with the 
beauty of this place as he passed through. He asked its name. 
He was told Zonza (an imbecile, fern.). " What brutality," 
said the Liberator, "to give so unworthy a name to the fairest 
spot in the Italy of the New World !" 

Soon we came to more muddy crossings of acequias — some 
bad, and others worse ; and I was told that all of them, for 
many miles, were derived from the Rio Guaves. Then we 
came to the river itself, and it was different from all the rest. 
The beds of all the other streams are from 8 to 20 feet below 



506 



NEW GRANADA. 



the banks. This could not be more than 4; and yet it rip- 
pled away over a pebbly bottom as pure, as happy, and as noisy 
as childhood ought to be. Farther on we left to our right the 
direct road to Cali, which leans toward the Cauca for some 
miles, then turns square down to it through a muddy lane of 
forest some miles long, and terrible in the rainy season. 

Before sunset we were at Cerrito, the only regularly laid out 
town (with a Plaza) this side of Cartago, except the paved towns 
and Libraida. In the centre of the Plaza stands a ceiba (Bom- 
bax Ceiba), the most glorious shade-tree I ever set my eyes 
on ; in size it is equal to a large elm, in shape a little more 
regular, the trunk almost smooth enough to varnish, and the 
thick green leaves already varnished. Just east of it is the 
church, of which the adjoining figure is a faithful delineation, 
kindly furnished me by the artist-traveler, Mr. Church. 




=«-£»—— 



CHURCH AT CERRITO. 



The front door, the bell-tower, the higher roof at the farther 
end over the principal altar, and the wing, which is the sacris- 
tia, are a fair illustration of the usual arrangement in churches 
in New Granada. Very few indeed have the sacristia on the 
other side, or behind the altar. The mercy-door is, of course, 
on the side hidden from view, for, as you enter the front door, 
it is nearly always at or near the middle of the left-hand side. 



CEREITO. 507 

I visited the boys' school here for less than five minutes one 
day. I do not always learn as much that is new by a longer 
visit. It is conducted on the Lancasterian principle, as are all 
the public schools here. Monitors were at this moment pass- 
ing around, examining the toes of the boys, cutting their nails, 
and extracting the niguas. This is a part of the regular busi- 
ness of Saturday afternoon, and wisely enjoined, so neglected 
are too many of these children at home. 

Here we turned at a right angle to the east, passed the mer- 
cy-door of the chureh, and, as we left the village, entered the 
estate of Aurora, the property of Serior Miguel Cabal, late go- 
bernador of the adjoining province of Buenaventura. We were 
soon seated at a plain, prompt dinner. I found our host a man 
of unusual intelligence, and, what is more, of a candor that leads 
me to rely more on his statements than on those of any other 
one man in all New Granada. He is a Liberal, and, therefore, 
I thought it a good time to get information on the Conservador 
presidents Herran and Mosquera. I rely upon little here that 
does not come in the way of admissions, and sometimes very 
reluctant ones. 

The successor of President Marquez was to be elected by 
Congress in 1841. It could not have been a quiet time, for the 
minority, it is said, attempted to break up Congress by a want 
of a quorum. All of them that could be caught were put in 
prison till enough were obtained for the purpose. One still 
was wanting to make a quorum when they were brought into 
the hall for the election of president ; that one lacking of a quo- 
rum was supplied by the corpse of a member who had died. A 
majority of this whole number, of living and dead, of free agents 
and prisoners, gave their votes for General Pedro Alcantara 
Herran. So says Samper, Apuntamientos y p. 345 ; but I am 
almost driven by all farther inquiries to the reluctant and ter- 
rible conclusion that this whole story is an unfounded falsehood, 
if not a shameless lie ! 

General Herran is son-in-law and companion in arms to his 
successor, General Mosquera. Their campaigns together had 
been chiefly against rebels on this side of the Quindio, and here 
were their warmest friends and bitterest enemies. 

Herran is not a great man ; but, after examining what his 



508 NEW GRANADA. 

worst enemies say, I conclude that he made a good president. 
His worst act was calling back the Jesuits, who had been un- 
justly expelled by Carlos III, by a decree of 18th Oct., 1767. 
Up to 1740, never were men more faithful and true to the inter- 
ests of humanity, as they understood them, than the Jesuits in 
New Granada. Then they were forbidden to extend their op- 
erations, and their restless spirit could find no other vent than 
in increasing their wealth and power. They were becoming 
more powerful than the King and the Viceroy, but had shown 
no disposition to abuse that power. They were expelled for 
not being as inefficient, as useless, and as wicked as all the world 
around them. As they went forth at night, lest a tumult should 
arise among their converts, and on foot, leaving their immense 
wealth the spoil to the crown, civilization wept. Half-civilized 
Indians threw away their clothes, left their villages to decay 
and their fields to become thickets again, and went to hunting 
and fishing. Many of these missionaries died of want before 
they found a refuge in Italy and England. 

This law never was repealed, but in 1842 Congress author- 
ized the government to invite missionaries from Europe to come 
and civilize the Indians. Herran has a brother high in ecclesi- 
astical rank. All churches and all safe governments are con- 
servative. By some unhappy fatality, the President was in- 
duced to consent to a return of the Jesuits, who had been grow- 
ing more wicked and dangerous every year since their expulsion. 
They came and settled in Bogota and other large places, already 
overstocked with idle and inefficient priests, and did their best 
to make themselves useful and necessary to the Church. We 
shall hear of them farther on. 

The course of the Herran administration was a general, slow, 
safe reform. He and his chief friends were slaveholders, and 
yet slavery was verging toward a sure extinction. None now 
born were slaves for life. He systematized instruction and rer 
pressed vagrancy. The laws were all compiled. But one of 
the most admirable of his works was a penal code — a system- 
atic classification of crimes and punishments, such as is per- 
haps unknown in the English language. Another long essay 
issued during this administration I have never read, nor will I 
venture to criticise, except for its length and its inappropriate- 



HEKEAN AND MOSQUERA ADMINISTRATIONS. 509 

ness. It is called the "Constitution of 1843," the second of 
New Granada. I think it must have fewer positive faults than 
its more democratic successor of 1853. 

Herran was succeeded by his father-in-law, General Tomas 
Cipriano Mosquera. More aristocratic in his feelings than his 
predecessor, perhaps with more talent, and certainly with no 
less patriotism, Mosquera was unquestionably a good president, 
and, in my opinion, the best New Granada has ever had, and as 
good as the best we have had since New Granada was a nation. 
They charge him with great cruelties in suppressing previous 
civil wars. It may be so ; but he would have been accused of 
severity had he been only a little too lenient. A Conservative, 
his whole administration was a series of cautious changes for 
the better. A brother to the archbishop, he brought on himself 
the censures of the Pope by abridging the privileges of the 
clergy. A slaveholder, he still was true to the principle of grad- 
ual extirpation of slavery. Immensely rich, he labored to bring 
about a change in the system of taxation that would be of spe- 
cial benefit to the poor. He did his utmost to benefit intercom- 
munication by land and water, and his liberality in the conces- 
sions to the Panama Railroad should teach our nation to respect 
his name and the character of his country that has ever sup- 
ported them. 

" Why, then," I asked of Seiior Cabal, " did your party op- 
pose the administration of Mosquera ?" 

" It was just a piece of ambition and desire for office," said he. 

Samper, the craziest of Red Republican theorists, explains it 
in these words : " Parties have sometimes incomprehensible ab- 
errations." While he condemns much in Mosquera that I ap- 
prove, he admits that his party ought to have voted for him. 
These are his words : "Judging by appearances, skillfully got 
up to produce a complete hallucination, in an evil hour they de- 
cided on the disastrous General Borrero." 

Seiior Cabal has an interesting library, and takes the " Cor- 
reo de Ultramar." He has a garden, and good orange-trees. 
He has a cane-mill and a distillery. I purposely avoided vis- 
iting the last, out of friendship to the estimable owner. His 
cane-mill is a sugar-factory, which is rarely the case here. As 
it must be 20 miles from the nearest waterfall (100 quite prob- 



510 NEW GEANADA. 

ably, for rockless countries can have none), and half a mile from 
the Cerrito at a point lower than his mill, I would have thought 
it a piece of insanity for him to attempt to introduce water-pow- 
er. But he has succeeded, thanks to the cheapness of labor, 
and the miraculous skill of Granadan acequeros. Even when 
accomplished it looks absurd. 

After breakfast, horses were brought out for a ride. There is 
a young person in the family, of the middle class, between lady 
and peasant. In aiding her to mount, as she put her foot in my 
hand I discovered that it was bare. I could not easily over- 
come my prejudice that human skin is less nice to touch than 
the tanned hide of an ox. The governor was the last to mount. 
As he did so, his horse started, threw him, and dislocated both 
his wrists. I rode off, and in a few moments returned with a 
doctor ; but surgical cases are so rare here that much skill is not 
to be expected. My residence in South America has brought 
to my knowledge but one more dislocation (of the humerus — set 
by the horse-breaker Toledo), and nothing else worse than 
bruises and scratches, of which mine in the Quindio (p. 366) 
was perhaps the very worst. Unfortunately, therefore, the dis- 
location was not properly reduced, and, weeks afterward, the re- 
duction was performed in Cali. 

La Senora de Cabal had three pairs of birds of different spe- 
cies. Far the most interesting of these were two little parrots, 
about the size of canaries, unable to talk, indeed, but the most 
intelligent birds I ever saw. Mr. Jenney, of Honda, kindly 
made me a present of a pair of the same species. I suffered ev- 
ery thing for them. I carried them on foot ten miles in a box, 
cared for them all the way down the Magdalena, and in the ter- 
rible ride of night and day from Calamar to Cartagena (65 miles 
of such roads, in 26 hours), I carried their cage hung round my 
neck. Bruised and shaken as they were, they would cling to 
the wires to get a chance to look into my face, and I never 
spoke to my horse but they answered me. At Cartagena this 
rough life was over ; but at the very sea-side one died and the 
other was lost. Never have I mourned for any of the brute 
creation as for these poor little parrots. 

Near here I once made an instructive visit. It was a reunion 
of nearly all our company over the Quindio at the house of one 



AN IRISH CONSUL. 5H 

of them. He met us on horseback soon after entering on the 
estate, and cordially embraced me without stopping our horses. 
We arrived about 5. As good a dinner as could be prepared 
on so short a notice was served at 9, and all the very large and 
interesting family sat down with us. We left the next morn- 
ing at 8, without even chocolate. This, I am told, was caused 
by the inefficiency of servants since the liberation of the slaves. 
Five years ago we might have breakfasted at this hour. Serv- 
ants have no motive to work where a sparse population occupy 
a fertile soil in a climate of perpetual autumn. We breakfast- 
ed, with two or three wooden spoons, at a dirty, wayside venta 
on what we could pick up. 

A little to the right of the main road to Palmira I was told 
there was an Englishman named Birr'-ni. He was said not to 
treat his wife very well as to clothing and family comforts, but 
such was my desire to see one of our race that I decided to call. 
Mr. Byrne proved to be an Irish gentleman and a Catholic, an 
ex-consul of Great Britain. His wife is a fortunate woman in 
the respects named : I know of not another in the Cauca that 
need not envy her. She is a Granadina, and speaks no En- 
glish in the hearing of strangers, but appears like one of our 
race. His two oldest children, a boy and girl, are evidently 
English, though they can not speak a word of our language yet. 
If ever a poor home-sick traveler comes here, who can not talk 
any Spanish, how would he be tantalized by the company of 
such a lady and such children ! 

Where government pays a foreign resident a sufficient sum to 
maintain a family, it ought to select one of our own race and re- 
ligion, and require him to take with him a family of the same. 
But consuls are either inadequately paid, good business men, 
living by commerce and kind by instinct, or, if they are amply 
salaried, you find them rewarded politicians, bent on laying up 
something to indemnify themselves for outlays in past elections. 
Hence I would sooner give a friend an introduction to the fam- 
ily of Mr. Byrne, foreign as it is in every thing but sympathy, 
than to a minister sent abroad by a political triumph. 

I committed one act of consummate folly at Mr. Byrne's. 
While there was preparing such a dinner as I shall not find 
again this side of the Quindio, I went into the sugar-house and 



512 NEW GRANADA. 

ate so freely of fragrant, warm sugar as to actually unfit me for 
eating any thing else. Here I saw, molasses drained from the 
sugar absolutely thrown away. It is called miel de purga, and 
these sirup-eaters are too dainty to touch it. 

Mr. Byrne is a flourishing farmer. While other foreign so- 
journers here have made it their study " how to buy cheap and 
sell dear," he has been ever ready to buy human labor when it 
was in the market, and so bestows it on his broad domain as 
to add to its permanent value. This is too slow a way to get 
rich to suit most who go abroad in search of wealth, but such a 
man is a benefactor to the country. I know not that an ex- 
perimental farm would do more for it. His buildings are in 
excellent condition, and the house is painted. This is so ex- 
traordinary a thing that I know of no word better to express it 
in Spanish than to say it is varnished. I can not now recol- 
lect a square inch of paint either on buildings or other articles 
in all this valley, except a varnish applied to totumas and other 
articles in Pasto, which is supposed to be a sort of resin or gum 
of unknown trees brought from the distant head-waters of the 
Amazon. This is usually colored red with arnotto, warmed, 
and applied mechanically in a thin film without reducing it to a 
liquid. 

I tore myself away from the Byrnes with a regret that none 
but a sojourner in a strange land can know. I met him and 
his boy twice afterward, but we were both journeying, and 
could exchange but a few words ; but I shall long remember 
them. For a little while still our road lay up the Cerrito, which 
is only a good mill-stream. Farther on we pass the hacienda 
of a Sefior Isaacs, an Antillan Jew turned Catholic, married to 
a Catholic wife, and the father of quite a family of active chil- 
dren. I am but slightly acquainted with them, and have never 
been at the hacienda. 

We stopped a while at a venta on the banks of the Sabale- 
tas, a larger stream, over which there is a bridge of guadua. It 
requires some courage to venture across this frail fabric, although 
some of them are said to be strong enough to bear a mule. A 
sprightly girl here seemed greatly to attract the fancy of my 
companion, who wished her to go home with him and live with 
his wife, but why, or in what capacity, I could not guess. She 



PALMIRA. 513 

promised to go at a future time, "but my conjecture was that 
they did not mean any thing, or that either supposed the other 
in earnest. 

We had passed below here a robber, as they said, in custody 
of two armed men, all on foot. They were on their way to 
Buga. It is quite common to go armed here, either with a pis- 
tol or sword, but it is entirely useless. The chief reason why 
no more robberies are committed is, that they are not eager for 
money, and, therefore, lack a motive. I have never wished my- 
self armed, or protected by the arms of another, for a single mo- 
ment. 

Palmira stands on the banks of a miserable muddy brook. 
Why it stands there I can not guess. It is the cabecera of the 
southern canton of the province of Cauca, and a district of 
10,055, which makes it the tenth town in New Granada in 
population. As it so happens that all the large towns, ex- 
cept Bogota, are unknown to us at home, I will name them : 
1, Bogota, 29,649 ; 2, Socorro, 15,015; 3, Piedecuesta, 14,841; 
4, Medellin, 13,755 ; 5, Cali, 11,848 ; 6, Sanjil, 11,528 ; 7, 
Velez, 11,178; 8, Valle,* 10,544 ; 9, Sonson, 10,244; 10, Pal- 
mira, 10,055 ; 11, Puente Nacional, 10,018 ; 12, Bucaramanga, 
10,008 ; next comes Cartagena, 9896. Tamalameque, which 
is found on all good maps, contains a population of 726, scat- 
tered over the whole district. 

I know of no place of the size of Palmira that excels it in the 
population of its jail. To this bad pre-eminence I think the ad- 
ministration of Lopez brought it by giving it wicked rulers ; but 
of that we shall see more presently. The jail is miserably in- 
secure. It is of unburnt brick, and the windows open on the 
street. 

The only public institution which I visited besides was the 
boys' school. I was then making my investigations on the 
amount of arithmetic learned in the common schools. Here I 
proposed this sum : A boy bought a cage for 12 cuartillos, paid 
5 for having it mended, and sold it for 19 : how much did he 

* Valle, Valle de Jesus, or Jesus-Maria, is a town in the canton of Velez (the 
most populous in New Granada), some 20 miles southwest of the town of Velez. 
It is of no importance except as the centre of a dense population, chiefly of In- 
dians. It has no post-office, and scarcely has a name of its own. 

Kk 



514 NEW GRANADA. 

gain or lose ? It was given to the best boy in a large school, 
but he could not do it. 

My host here, Doctor Z., was a lawyer who had turned mer- 
chant, as is quite common. I saw another LL.D. here sell a 
string of glass beads to a mulata to put on her babe. Dr. Z. 
has little reverence for the priests. He told me a tough story 
of one of them. He was a negligent priest, who was called sud- 
denly to administer the last sacraments to two dying persons. 
At the bedside of the first he opened his wafer-box, and behold! 
an intruding cockroach had eaten all but the least particle of the 
hostia. According to the doctors, all consecrated wafers must 
be eaten by a Christian. What the cockroach had swallowed 
must be no exception. He judged the moribund to be so far 
gone as to be unconscious, and so, taking the prisoner in his fin- 
gers, he asked, "Have you faith to believe that what I now pre- 
sent to you is the body of God ?" " The body of God !" cries 
the poor fellow, opening wide his glazing eyes ; " it is a cock- 
roach!" 

I was invited to dine with a family here. It was a Friday in 
Lent, and I had to do without meat. This is the only instance 
in all my Granadan experience where the lady would not allow 
any meat on her table. I have seen one lady and one child fast, 
but no more, except this family. The priests are supposed to 
fast. 

The space is very broad here between the foot of the hills and 
the river. Below, large estates extended from the river to the 
mountains, or to the edge of occupied land. Here, above, fenced 
fields are much more common, and there may be several farms, 
One east of the other; but, generally, the river-forest here is much 
wider than below ; in some cases nearly 10 miles wide. On 
leaving Palmira we turn almost due west. Our southward 
journey in this volume is virtually at an end. 

Between here and the river lies some of the worst road in the 
world on account of mud. The distance between Palmira and 
Cali is given as 18 or 19 miles, but it is as far as a horse ought 
to travel in a day. At one place we had to unsaddle our horses 
and walk across a slough on logs, holding them by the halter 
lest they drown. Its desperate character might at once be 
known by seeing Pontederia azurea growing there. 



CALL 515 

Then came a palm forest of a thousand acres. Our course 
would lay around the fallen stems with a monotonous plash of 
horses' hoofs. I saw here some cacao-trees which I was assured 
were indigenous. I so believe them, for I think no mortal would 
live here to cultivate them. 

Good news ! we are at the ferry at last ! Our saddles are in 
the boat, we hold our horses by the bridle, and set loose from 
the shore. A few rods diagonal paddling of man and beast, 
and we scramble up the west bank of the Cauca. We have left 
the province of Cauca for that of Buenaventura. 



CHAPTEK XXXIII. 

CALI AND VIJES. 

Cali. — Church built of old Clothes. — A Priest making Jews. — Rare Flower and 
miraculous Image. — North American in the Hospital. — Schools. — Weaving. 
— Sounds familiar. — Funeral. — Celebration of a Party Triumph. — Election of 
Lopez. — A Turn northward. — A fine Bridge. — Yumbo. — Copper cheaper than 
Iron. — San Marcos. — Route to the Pacific. — Copper Mine. — Gold Mining and 
Washing. — Comb Manufactory. — Maladministration in the Cauca. — Lands in 
common. — Our Priest : his Eloquence and Morals. — Visit to a Hermit. — He- 
roic Eating. — Espinal. — Bolivia. — Pretty Child. — Locating Road. — Fence of 
Cornstalks. — Railroad to the Pacific. — Defective Government. — Constitution 
of 1853. — Finances. — Protection of Vagabonds. — The Granadinos are a moral 
People. 

We are on the left bank of the Cauca, and about 4 miles east 
of Cali. For some distance the land is liable to be overflowed, 
but at length we come to soil that is capable of cultivation. 
There are one or two haciendas near the road. At length we 
see before us an immense compact grove, with palms rising here 
and there above the rest of the foliage, and, above all, some 
steeples, and the bodies of two churches, one of them crowned 
with a fine dome. That grove covers Cali. 

A nearer view does not belie the pleasing prospect at a dis- 
tance. It stands on the right bank of Cali Eiver, on dry, open 
ground, half a mile perhaps from the foot of the western or Cal- 
das chain of the Andes. It may be regarded as the sea-port of 
the Cauca Valley. It is the capital of the province of Buena- 



516 NEW GEANADA. 

Ventura, and, while that port has but 1986 inhabitants, Cali, the 
fifth town in New Granada, has 11,848. It is one of those old 
towns that I love to meet with, where most of the architecture 
is solid, and few indeed of the roofs are thatched. It has a suf- 
ficient supply of suppressed convents for hospital, colegio, and 
other public uses, and one still in operation, a Franciscan con- 
vent of monks, besides a beateria, or place for the special devo- 
tions of females. 

This convent of San Francisco is probably the richest west 
of the Quindio. . Its church is exceeded in size only by the Ca- 
thedral of Bogota and the church at Chiquinquira. It is really 
the finest church I have seen here. They say it was built of 
old clothes. From some notion of the people, they love to be 
buried in the robes of a Franciscan friar. An old robe is pre- 
ferred to a new one, and some say the older the better ; so a 
friar can not afford to keep his clothes till they get shabby. A 
man not acquainted with this custom became alarmed once for 
the extinction of the order. Every day or two he met a Fran- 
ciscan going to his last home. On discovering his mistake, he 
wondered if the devil could be cheated as he was. 

At a high mass here I was surprised by hearing a priest that 
could really sing ; it was a great treat. I was so much inter- 
ested in him that I sought an introduction to him, and called 
on him. He proved to be an Italian. He had refrained from 
making music a special study, he assured me, because he was 
desirous of preaching, and if he became a chorister it would in- 
terfere with his bent. I never heard him preach, but urged that 
he could not render a better service to religion than by render- 
ing the musical parts of it endurable. He told me he was also 
engaged in image-making, and showed me some Jews that he 
was making for the processions of Holy Week. I told him that 
I thought a priest's time better spent in making Christians out 
of pagans than making Jews out of gypsum. He asked me to 
dine with him, but I deferred it till another occasion. When I 
next visited Cali he had moved to another convent. ^ 

San Pedro is a parish church of Cali, but is not equal, in ei- 
ther size or splendor, to San Francisco. It glories in a suite of 
large, new pictures, apparently all by the hand of the same art- 
ist, and a very industrious one. I am wicked enough to like 



FLOWER AND IMAGE OF QUEREME. 517 

new paintings, and, though this artist will never equal Vasquez, 
I looked them over with great satisfaction. 

They had a great procession here, in which some image of 
the Virgin went from her home through a large number of the 
streets and back home again. Great preparations were made 
at some of the places it was to pass, to ornament the houses by 
hanging out calico, and whatever they thought ornamental. Af- 
ter the procession was over I was permitted to see Our Lady of 
the Queremal. Quereme is the name of a fragrant flower that 
is not known to grow in but one place in the world, and that is 
west of Cali. It is the Thibaudia Quereme, and the place 
where it grows is the Queremal. It is sold in the market of 
Cali whenever it is in flower. Well, in that famous place was 
found an image, all carved out of stone by supernatural means. 
This was brought to Cali, as if there had been an error in its 
first collocation. It has been covered, with paint and clothes, 
and set up in a camarin to be worshiped. I went up into the 
camarin and examined it. 

Farther south, on the very borders of Equador, is an image 
supernaturally painted on a perpendicular ledge of rock. With 
immense labor, the art of man has been able to construct a chap- 
el to protect it and adore it in. None of these, however, can 
near approach in fame the oldest of these cheats, the old daub 
of Chiquinquira. 

I learned that there was a North American in the hospital 
here, so I felt I must call upon him. He was a negro from 
Boston. The nature of his affliction did not greatly prejudice 
me in his favor. I found his situation very comfortable there ; 
as good, in fact, as in most of our hospitals at the North. The 
hospital is spacious and well conducted. I found he needed 
nothing but some aid in finding employment after his discharge. 

I visited the colegio. It was, perhaps, my most profitable 
visit to a school. I introduced myself to the sub-director, who 
seemed anxious to enlighten me in their modes of teaching. I 
was curious to hear his boys conjugate a Latin verb. Our 
faulty way is to accentuate the termination in all cases. Most 
teachers consider it inevitable. So our boys say, Amabamm, 
amabass, amabatt. Here they said amabam, amabas, amabat. 
But the most intolerable curse of our Latin schools is the stu- 



518 NEW GRANADA. 

piditj of teaching a false pronunciation that makes a man a bar- 
barian wherever English is not spoken ; that is where he needs 
Latin most. Fortunately for me, I had for years used the Con- 
tinental pronunciation which is laid down in the best of our 
systems of teaching Latin, Bullions'. 

From Latin I set them to parsing Spanish, and got them on 
that untranslatable phrase, Que tal le ha ido a usted (what so 
to him has it gone to your majesty), which means how have 
you been. The boy was puzzled ; the sub-director was helping 
him out, when the director entered. Then sprung up an earnest 
debate between the two. The sub-director supposed an ellipsis 
of several words — less than twenty, I think. The director main- 
tained that the phrase was no more capable- of analysis and the 
application of syntax to its components than a compound in- 
terjection. I withheld my opinion through pretended modesty, 
in reality because it agreed with that of the inferior. Most of 
my readers will be likely to adhere to the director's notion that 
it is unparsable, and so we will leave it. 

My chief objection to the system of education in this colegio 
is, that it is too speculative, and undervalues practical knowl- 
edge, as geography and chemistry ; and too ambitious, having 
too much of calculus, and too little of arithmetic. Every thing 
is attempted, and, therefore, little is mastered. 

I visited the primary girls' school. It occupied the whole of 
a casa claustrada — a quite needless amount of space. It was 
a well-ordered school. I set myself to guess the proportion of 
African and European blood in the school, and think it was 
about one third African, with no visible intermixture of Indian. 
They sang, but only as a devotional exercise. They had a lit- 
tle printed collection of hymns. No two hymns could be sung 
to the same tune : long metre, common, and short, are unknown 
here. This would be an inconvenience in attempting to intro- 
duce the necessary Protestant hymns, and of theirs there is 
none that the Protestant could use except the Trisagio, or hymn 
to the Trinity, which is not, after all, worth much either as to 
words or music. I expressed a wish to obtain their hymn- 
book, which they assured me I could do at the gobernacion. 
" We have enough to spare here," added the directora ; " but, 
as they are receipted for, it is impossible for us to give away or 



SIGHTS AND SOUNDS IN CALL 519 

lose one without being held accountable." When a teacher re- 
signs, a clerk of the gobernador conies, counts all the property 
of the school, and gives it over to the successor, taking a re- 
ceipt. 

I saw a loom in Cali. It is the only one I have seen. A 
rude affair it was, far inferior to any of our old hand-looms. 
There are no arts that need introducing here more than spin- 
ning and weaving. Spinning must precede weaving, which can 
not flourish while spinning is done in the antique mode, and spin- 
ning-wheels are unknown. Had half the expense spent in intro- 
ducing factory machinery into New Granada been spent on do- 
mestic machinery, a new era would have dawned here. Neither 
spinning nor weaving have been introduced into New Granada 
by Europeans, though possibly this loom may have been pat- 
terned after those of Spain. The manta, or native cotton cloth, 
made from an indigenous shrub, was one of the riches of the ab- 
origines before the conquest, and the mode of spinning can not 
have improved any since that day. 

I am sorry to say that I heard one sound in Cali that re- 
minded me of home. I am ashamed to tell what it was, but as 
a faithful, conscientious traveler I have no alternative. It was 
a man quarreling with (I suppose) his wife. For how many 
months has this been an unknown sound to my ears ! I heard 
two women quarreling in Bogota, and came near seeing a quar- 
rel of two bogas on the Magdalena ; but these men are of a de- 
graded race and mixed blood, ignorant and half civilized, wear 
machetes to cut bushes, and not a bowie-knife to fight with, 
and do not even whip their wives. 

There is a hospital for lepers here. I was anxious to visit 
it, but my friends protested ; so much would they dread the in- 
troduction of elephantiasis into their families, to gratify my curi- 
osity. I can not think the disease so contagious as they im- 
agine, for I do not hear of those who live with lepers contract- 
ing it. 

I attended the funeral of a General Borrero — not, as I then 
supposed, the candidate for President in 1847. He was a mem- 
ber of La Tercera, the third order of St. Francis, and according- 
ly was buried as a monk. " When the devil was sick, the devil 
a monk would be." His body lay, the night before the funeral. 



520 NEW GKANADA. 

in a chapel of the convent. The next day they sung the mass 
of the defunct, with the accompaniment of the best musicians 
and vocalists that could be hired in Cali. 

Then marched forth a long procession through the streets, 
with hats off, and candles thirty inches long and two in diam- 
eter, dropping wax in the street. They went to a small church, 
or chapel, at the northern extremity of Cali, adjoining the old 
cemetery. Here some farther singing and praying was perform- 
ed, and the procession proceeded eastward, out of town and over 
the plain, to the new cemetery, where as yet no chapel has been 
built. I did not enter the cemetery with the procession, nor 
see the body deposited in its last resting-place, owing to a little 
accident in leaping one of the stagnant brooks that cut the plain 
in every direction ; I had landed in a soft spot, and covered my- 
self with rich black mud nearly up to my knees. When I had 
got it washed off, and had entered the cemetery, the body was 
already placed in a brick boveda, or oven, about three feet high, 
and they were building up the mouth. Burnt bricks are al- 
ways used for this work. 

One other great affair came off here, the celebration of the 
triumph of the Liberales, on 7th March, 1849, when President 
Lopez was elected president. The affair was official, and, frank- 
ly to speak my sentiments, therefore in bad taste. Especially 
it was adding insult to injury to require the Franciscan monks 
to celebrate an event that grieved the heart of every fanatic. 

The celebration began, of course, with the vesper of the day, 
on Sunday night; this was by an illumination. As there is 
no window-breaking mob here, and no windows to be broken, 
the affair suffered in brilliancy accordingly. In the Plaza there 
were but thirty-one lights, and most of these were in the bal- 
conies of government offices. 

On Monday there was a grand mass in San Francisco. Ar- 
tillery and infantry were drawn up in front of the church. At 
the proper time, when all the bells rang, the drums also beat, 
and the rattle of musketry and the thunder of cannon added 
wings to the devotion of the dense crowd that filled the vast and 
beautiful church. Soldiers on parade do not kneel or remove 
caps at mass. 

From my Conservador friend, Don Eladio Vargas, and the 



ELECTION OF LOPEZ. 521 

amiable botanist, Senor Jose Maria Triana, of the Comision Co- 
regrafica, whom I unexpectedly met here together, I had most 
of my information about that memorable day. 

"The day they celebrate," says Don Eladio, "was one of 
the saddest in the annals of New Granada, not more in its con- 
sequences than in itself. It was the triumph of the poniards of 
a Bogota mob over the representatives of the people. They 
were besieged in the Church of Santo Domingo, where the ses- 
sion was held, and elected Lopez only to escape assassination." 

" What assassination nor what squashes (calabazas) ?" says 
Pepe Triana. "Who but your idol Mosquera had the command 
of the military in Bogota at the time ? I myself was one of 
that mob, as you call us. I know not one of us that was armed. 
The only arms I saw there were a pair of pistols, which were 
handed to Dr. Ospina, Mosquera's evil genius ; nor do I know 
of others, except that two Conservador representatives, Neira 
and Pardo the pious, intimated that they were prepared to sell 
their lives as dearly as possible. And I know that the military 
preparations were complete. The night before, the cannon were 
loaded with grape. All the horses of the cavalry had their sad- 
dles on all night, and, at the time, all the troops were drawn up 
at the barracks with guns loaded with ball. Lines of trumpet- 
ers, disguised in citizens' dress, extended from Santo Domingo 
to all the barracks. Within, of course, the trumpeter that al- 
ways attends the sessions of Congress was present in his uni- 
form. What danger could threaten Congress with these prep- 
arations ?" 

V. " I do not deny your account of the preparations : it was 
the President's duty to make them. But you dare not deny 
that Congress was threatened. This I will prove beyond con- 
tradiction from the ' Apuntamientos' of Samper. First he says 
that * because Lopez had more votes in the popular election than 
Cuervo and Gori together, the democratic party rightly consid- 
ered that this circumstance authorized them to demand his elec- 
tion — lo autorizaba para exijirla /' page 444. Next, page 446, 
' At each ballot which contained the name of General Lopez, 
there arose in the auditory an exclamation of joy and enthusi- 
asm like the strophe of a triumphal hymn : a vague and sudden 
murmur, which expressed disgust, was the echo to the name of 



522 NEW GRANADA. 

Dr. Cuervo.' And again, ' When, at the third ballot, the choice 
was limited to two candidates, and Cuervo had 43 votes, Lopez 
41, and the rest were blank, some of the barra thought Cuervo 
was elected, and a prolonged murmur, like the distant roar of 
the tempest, resounded under the dome of the temple.' Those 
blank votes are said to have been cast by way of experiment, to 
see whether they could elect Cuervo and be safe." 

T. " Still there was no mob and no menace, for then Con- 
gress ordered the church to be cleared. All went out quietly 
into the bitter cold rain, and waited in the open street while the 
last decisive ballot was taken. And that infamous vote of Ma- 
riano Ospina ' for Jose Hilario Lopez, in order that Congress be 
not assassinated,' was the beginning of the calumny that you 
are now trying to keep alive." 

Now what can an impartial traveler make out of a discussion 
like this ? My conclusion is that the will of the nation was ex- 
ecuted in the election of Lopez ; that Congress was not free in 
the election, and that there was danger in resisting the will of 
the populace ; that they yielded to it partly through cowardice, 
and partly because their conscience convicted them of the wrong 
they wished to do in defeating the will of the nation ; and, last- 
ly, that the pressure exerted upon them amounted only to im- 
plied threats, which probably never would have been executed. 
And I think that Samper throws some light on this question in 
his remarks on the election of Joaquin Mosquera in 1830, when 
the " youth of Bogota succeeded in inspiring the Convention 
with confidence." This draws one to the conclusion that the 
elections are not always free. The conduct of President Mos- 
quera was admirable through the whole of it, and especially 
when, at the close, he promptly went to the residence of Lopez 
to congratulate him on his election. 

An accidental circumstance led me to call on Dr. Manuel 
Maria Mollarino. I supposed him at the time to be an M.D., 
but, judging from his library, I infer that he is (as are most of the 
doctors here) an LL.D. I little foresaw then that the supreme 
power was so soon to be placed in his hands as Vice-president. 
He is an intelligent gentleman, and speaks very good English ; 
better, I think, than any one I have met who has not resided in 
an English country, or, as Vice-president Obaldia, on the Isth-. 



THE TURNING-POINT. 523 

mus. He is a Conservador, but not of an ultra stamp, and, 
had he any power in his hands, would use it well ; but the Pres- 
ident is too much like a head clerk to sign papers. 

There are some fine walks about Cali, but none better than 
up to the Church of San Nicolas, on a high knoll that overlooks 
the whole city. Leaving this on my left, and descending to- 
ward the river, I followed up its right bank. I passed the aque- 
duct which supplies Cali with water at a place where it was 
carried over a hollow. I was surprised that it was not larger, 
although I believe it is larger than any in Bogota ; its external 
dimensions are only about thirty inches square. Farther up it 
is an open acequia. I could not believe my eyes here, for it 
seemed that the acequia descended toward the river, while the 
water was flowing in it quite rapidly from the river. I had to 
stop and examine before I could convince myself of the optical 
illusion. 

Farther up, I ended my southward progress where the road 
to Buenaventura crosses the river. An immense pile of bales 
of tobacco, incased in hide, were here waiting either for the mules 
to rest or for others to be hired. I am now in latitude 3° 25' 
north, and perhaps nearer the equator than I shall ever be again. 
But no differences of latitude are felt here. Like the length of 
days near the solstice, where a week makes not so much varia- 
tion as a single day at the equinoxes, the seven degrees I have 
traversed in these pages make but an imperceptible difference, 
while that of the two degrees between New York and Boston is 
very considerable. 

There are interesting coal mines and beds of lignite near Cali 
that deserve the attention of the traveler, and some things here 
that might richly reward the mineralogist, but I did not learn of 
them in season to visit them. 

I left Cali in company with Senor Triana and Senor Mon- 
zon, director of some mining operations which we wished to visit 
at Vijes. We crossed the Cali over a brick bridge, the longest 
and best bridge, as well as the last, that I have seen in all New 
Granada. It is wide enough for a carriage to pass, and con- 
sists of seven arches. You would forget where you are while 
looking at the bridge ; but look above at the washerwomen that 
line the bank, or the swimming boys and swimming girls below, 
and you will see that you are in New Granada yet. 



524 NEW GKANADA. 

Another stream is to Tbe passed, and you are fairly on the way. 
I saw on a shed or hut as I left a singular roof of guadua. It 
was made of stems split in two. One set was placed like open 
troughs, side by side, running straight down from the ridge-pole 
to the eaves. Over the adjacent edges of these were reversed 
an equal number of others, that prevented the rain from getting 
in between them. 

Under a large tree by the wayside we found a man resting, 
who begged of us. He gave as a reason for giving him alms 
that he was a convict recently liberated from presidio. Farther 
on, as we were going south, on our left hand, Senor Monzon 
showed us a natural picture, an Ecce Homo. Like the Old Man 
of the Mountain, in the White Hills of New Hampshire, the re- 
semblance appears in but one point ; but, unlike that, it requires 
considerable imagination to see it at all : I utterly failed. 

Here we come to the most terrible quagmire that I have ever 
seen out of the Quindio, except, perhaps, on some of the roads 
to the bank of the Cauca. I crossed it once in the dark, and, 
in all my travels, I have suffered no more from fear. Deliver 
me from the quagmires, and I will meet cheerfully the preci- 
pices, fierce bulls, robbers, and serpents. 

I stopped that night at the Hacienda of Arroyo-hondo, a be- 
nighted stranger. I met that ready hospitality that never fails 
a gentleman in any house or cottage in a land where negatives 
are almost unknown ; " in the sweet land of si" as one calls it. 
Here I saw perhaps the oldest cane-mill that goes by water- 
power in the country. The rollers were of copper, brought from 
the south, or else extracted from a mine near Vijes. They are 
upright, and the water-wheel is a tub-wheel. It is not well con- 
trived, and never before have I found copper cheaper than iron. 

A mile or two to our left is the town of Yumbo. Still farther 
north is a hacienda at the foot of the mountain, where there is a 
lime-kiln. The only other in the Valley of the Cauca is, as I 
have said, at Vijes, a little farther down. A curious bird here 
attracted my attention. It was a species of swallow, a variety 
of Hirundo rufa, it is said, that has two long tail-feathers pro- 
jecting like the divergent blades of a pair of scissors, hence call- 
ed tijareta. Another of the wading tribe is here found, always 
on dry ground, picking up snails or other helpless animals with 



CAKBIAGE-KOAD TO THE PACIFIC. 525 

its long, curved bill. From its cry it is called cocli, and is sup- 
posed to be a Scopus. Another bird, looking much like a hawk, 
has quite similar habits. It is often seen perched on the back 
of a cow, particularly if she be lying down. It is supposed to 
free cattle from insects that infest them, and is therefore called 
garropatero. It may be Crotophaga Piririgua. 

The hills, and therefore the road, are approaching the river. 
We are here on the principal road from Cali to Buga, and also 
to Koldanillo on this side, till here the two roads part, and the 
one directs itself to a ferry, and the other to a spur of the hill, 
over which it climbs. I left them both and turned to a hacien- 
da in a nook of the hills, called San Marcos. Here I found a 
pleasant family, and, by a trip up a small stream, gained some 
interesting information. 

I went up about three miles. I rose steadily, but not rapid- 
ly. No extraordinary skill would be here needed to make a 
tolerable wagon-road. Here I found solid rock every where, 
which much reminded me of the mica-slate regions of Vermont. 
Veins of quartz were abundant, and often auriferous. There 
were some small waterfalls, the first of even six inches that I 
had seen in the Valley of the Cauca. At length I came to 
where a ridge of earth seemed to stretch across the valley. I 
stood on it, and west of me extended the Valley of the Dagua, 
that empties into the Pacific at Buenaventura. I can hardly 
believe that there can be any easier way for a wagon-road from 
Bogota to the Pacific than this. The port is almost exactly 
west of where I stand, and it can not be twenty miles to tide- 
water. 

Returning to San Marcos, they gave me the first fruit of the 
pitajaya that I ever saw ; I mean the yellow pitajaya, for the 
red one is not worth eating. The true Cereus Pitajaya of 
Jacquin is said to be a maritime species, with the fruit scarlet 
without and white within, while this excellent fruit is yellow, 
both rind and pulp. I call it one of the best fruits of the tropics. 
I have never seen the expanded flower of any species of Cereus 
here. They open at night. 

Riding under a tall Capparidate tree, I began to rise a rocky 
spur of the Caldas chain. Soon on my right were some old 
diggings, from whence is said to have come all the copper of the 



526 NE W GRANADA. 

bells of the convent of San Francisco in Cali. In a few rods 
of it are more recent excavations for gold, now arrested, I am 
told, by a lawsuit. The spur reaches down to the very river 
bank, and then bends down the river as if to meet another spur 
sent off a few miles below. Between is a large plain, mostly 
shut in by steep hills, which, however, do not prevent it from 
having a water-front on the muddy Cauca of a mile or so. 
This is the Plain of Vijes, where our story had its beginning, 
and where it is soon to reach its end. 

A steep descent brought me to the small village of mud and 
thatch where Senores Monzon and Triana were awaiting me, 
and also dinner at the hospitable board of the former. Senor 
Miguel Caldas lives opposite, in far the best house in town. 
He has had a comb manufactory here, the machinery of which 
he has just sold to some gentlemen in Cerrito, opposite here, in 
the eastern Banda. Combs ought to be a profitable manufac- 
ture where horns bear only a nominal price ; but no factories 
can flourish here till there are more necessities and fewer holi- 
days. The combs were carelessly made, and the utmost a 
Caucan establishment can aim at now is to supply the local de- 
mand, which is chiefly for side-combs, and perhaps a few dress- 
ing-combs. They are by no means so important an ornament 
as at the North. 

Minas should be translated deposits rather than mines. The 
works of Senor Caicedo, under the directions of Senor Mon- 
zon, are rather explorations than mines. There are two veins 
opened in half a mile of the Plaza, and a mill constructing for 
grinding and amalgamation. It does not look to me as if it 
would work. There are some gold- washers here — a queer race. 
They have a chief who is paid for doing nothing but to manage 
them and keep them at work. They wash in an ox-hom flat- 
tened out. It requires a great deal of skill to separate micro- 
scopic particles of gold from the heavy ferruginous sand, and 
bring it to sight, when it is said pintarse — to paint itself. 
Their operations here do not pay. All the hope of Vijes is in 
the quartz, which, I should judge, might be valuable when prop- 
erly wrought. 

Senor Caldas is a highly intelligent man, but perhaps the 
most violent Conservador I have met with ; and not without 



THE PEREERISTAS. 527 

reason. At the last election he was accused of treason, and a 
gang, I might say, of soldiers "were sent down to arrest him, 
and he was dragged off to Cali. The only reason why he has 
not committed treason was for the want of any chance to suc- 
ceed. The idea was simply absurd. 

I have reserved till now the mention of a sight that met my 
eyes frequently between Buga and Palmira. I saw many fields 
that had once been fenced, of which the fence was destroyed. I 
think I have known a mile, I might say miles together, destroyed. 
They tell me that a thousand men have been employed in this 
work of devastation at once. I applied to the authorities for an 
explanation of the matter, but for a long time received none, but 
then received too much. I never was able to read it all. 

"No man can dispute or explain away," says Senor Caldas, 
" the chief facts. Your own eyes, Senor, have seen the devas- 
tation of once flourishing properties ; but that is little. The 
men who did it called themselves Perreristas. Perrero means 
a dog- whip, the heaviest whip known here, with handle of guay- 
acan and lash of raw-hide. The owners of these fields were 
whipped with them whenever they caught them. Many suf- 
fered this ignominy. Many left their property to ruin, and 
lived in the large towns in poverty and want, and not even then 
in safety. Houses, too, were damaged, as the Senor has also 
seen. "Women were violated. And all this was done by the 
secret orders of President Lopez and his more infamous success- 
or Obando." 

" I can not deny the crimes," replies Triana ; " but there are 
extenuating circumstances that you do not mention ; and as to 
their origin, I can not agree with you in attributing them to even 
the gobemadores, and still less to the President. There has al- 
ways been a ferocity in the politics on this side of the Quindio. 
More blood has been shed in this valley than in all the rest of 
the republic. Pasto has always been an active or dormant 
volcano. The property of this central part of the valley has 
been all in the hands of rich holders of slaves and mines in the 
Choco. They have had no sympathy with the poor. They 
have been the owners of a large part of the inhabitants of this 
valley also, till the law made them loose their grasp on the 1st 
of January, 1852." 



528 NEW GRANADA. 

" But what has the liberation of slaves in 1852 to do with 
this matter of 1849 and '50 ?" 

" The liberation, little ; the anticipation of a premature liber- 
ation, much. Even in Bogota, never had there been such po- 
litical fury as characterized the period after the presidential elec- 
tion of 1849, when the excitement ought to have become quiet. 
The press, the pulpit, and the Jesuits were all busy. School- 
boys formed political societies ; young ladies, at their windows, 
frowned on gentlemen whose politics they did not like, and even 
women of mature age joined in societies for the extermination 
of democracy as an enemy to religion. Such were the societies 
of the Boy-God — Mno Dios. All this was before the Lopez 
administration had done good or evil." 

"Were these schoolboys all Conservadores ? Was there no 
Sociedad Democratica, no Escuela Republicana ?" 

"There must be defense where there is attack. The adminis- 
tration must free itself of its most dangerous enemies, the Jesu- 
its, and how ? Congress was in session, but, before any law rel- 
ative to them could have passed both houses, even had the Sen- 
ado been willing to support the administration, their machina- 
tions would have broken out into a rebellion from Cucuta to 
Tuquerres ; so, while the ' Gaceta Oficial' was preparing, as 
usual, the daring decree in the ' Gaceta Oficial Extra' of 18th 
May, 1851, was printed elsewhere, and suddenly the whole fra- 
ternity were put on the march at a day's warning, and with no 
opportunity to spring their mine." 

" But what has all this to do with the Cauca ?" 

" Simply that here Conservadores and oppressors were the 
same, and that their fury prompted to deeds that provoked the 
oppressed beyond endurance. I quote Samper's 'Apuntami- 
entos,' page 533 : ' The oligarchy denied to the commonalty 
the unoccupied land, denied them wood, and the fields and wa- 
ters that they could use, and must have in order to live. They 
imprisoned them for debt ; they insulted them with a contempt 
that concealed the fear they had of them ; they vilified them in 
speeches, and slandered them by the press ; they denied the de- 
pendent man his rights, whipped and martyrized him if he were 
slave, despised him if he were free, oppressed him with monop- 
olies, brutified him with superstition, and charged on him as a 
crime the popular victory of the 7th of March.' " 



MISGOVEKNMENT OF THE CAUCA. 529 

" Gammon. The fact was that the land and many of the in- 
habitants were owned by the rich, but the lower classes had full 
opportunities to buy their liberty and land. They did not 
choose to. To do this they must be industrious and econom- 
ical, two things they hated. They heard that it was preached 
in Bogota that ' property is robbery ;' and here is the explana- 
tion of the whole. These poor people were instigated to carry 
out this new gospel and bring on the millennium of barbarism." 

" And Lopez directed these outrages ?" 

" That I most seriously believe, but I do not expect to con- 
vince you. I fully believe that two sets of directions were sent 
to Cali to our Gobernador Mercado, one to publish and another 
to act by : one to suppress outrage, and the other to encourage 
it. But I do know, and you can not deny, that Antonio Mateus, 
then jefe politico of the canton de Palmira, and at this accursed 
moment Gobernador of Cauca— " 

"By the free vote of a majority of the citizens of the prov- 
ince. 1 ' 

"Ay, if you will have it so. Do you doubt that he himself, 
while jefe politico, headed bands of perreristas ? Do you doubt 
that he stood looking on while twelve of his bandits in suc- 
cession outraged a respectable lady in open day in the Plaza of 
Candelaria ?" 

" I can not justify any wrong, however much provoked, nor 
am I going to say that I think Mateus an honest man ; but 
how can I tell what to believe when Conservador malice spares 
not even the dead ? Have you seen the poetry on the death of 
Carlos Gomez, gobernador of Cauca ? While his poor widow 
is overwhelmed with her affliction, the Conservadores are singing, 

'"Earth has one bandit less, 
And hell one devil more.' " 

" Well, if it was not his complicity, it was at least his inef- 
ficiency that brought all this ruin on so many haciendas, and 
impoverished the provincia he was sent to govern. Samper 
himself admits as much while defending the Lopez administra- 
tion as best he may. He says, ' Governor Mercado has been to 
Governor Gomez as Buenaventura was to Cauca, as small faults 
are to crime.' And when the mob assassinated Pinto and Mo- 
rales in Cartago, on 19th June, 1851, the very best that could 

Ll 



530 NEW GKANADA. 

be said of the gobernador would be that he was near the spot, 
and took no part either in killing or saving them ; and the ap- 
pointment of Mateus by Obando as governor of Cauca, even had 
lie been innocent, was an outrage, since so many regarded him 
as a monster. He first appointed Wenceslao Caravajal, a Lib- 
eral, it is true, but a fair man. Did the Conservadores oppose 
his plans ?" 

"No, they spoke well of him." 

"Well, Sefior Holton, did not you witness the panic thai 
spread over the province when he was superseded by Mateus ?" 

" I must say," I replied, "that I regretted that step of Oban- 
do 's. If he be a good man, even the heads of government judge 
him ill. I asked a member of the cabinet the reason of this ap- 
pointment, and he told me it was Obando's own act, opposed 
strongly by all the cabinet, but persisted in with such earnest- 
ness because Mateus had done Obando some personal service, 
that finally they yielded out of respect to the President. I re- 
gard it as the worst act, perhaps the only bad act of Obando's 
administration. " 

"Now, Sefior Norteamericano," continued Caldas, "I have 
heard you speak of insurrection as in all cases a crime, and con- 
demn that of 1851. Had you been here then, what advice 
would you have given these men on the other side of the Cauca 
when their fences were destroyed, their wives and daughters out- 
raged under the very eyes of the officers of the law, and their 
backs exposed to the infamy of the lash ? Would you advise 
patient submission or rebellion?" 

" It was a hard case," I replied; " and I never felt so much 
like justifying Mosquera, Herran, and Arboleda as at this mo- 
ment. But did insurrection remedy the evil ?" 

"No; nor do I know of any remedy but to migrate to a 
country that has a reliable government. Do you think the 
United States could be prevailed on to make this region a part 
of their territory ?" 

" Such a step would be highly inexpedient for us. Now we 
have a compact territory, so that when once the Atlantic and 
Pacific are united by railroad, no power can attack any part of 
our country so easily as we could defend it. But add to our 
territory the Sandwich Islands, Panama, or Cuba, or this va]- 



LANDS HELD IN COMMON. 531 

ley, and it would be giving bonds to other nations to keep the 
peace with them. To desire it would be as if a man wished his 
nose longer than his arm, so that his assailant could pull it 
when too far off to be struck for his offense. The addition of 
any island or detached territory would be a curse to us which 
no imaginary advantages would repay." 

" Then I see but one remedy. If this continue, we must kill 
and dry beef enough for the journey, kill all our other cows for 
the gallinazos, and all the horses we do not need on our jour- 
ney, burn all our houses, and leave our fields to the Red Repub- 
licans to fight over ; for with such a government no man of prop- 
erty can live." 

Now I honestly believe that there is at least a shadow of jus- 
tice in his views. What with Samper's theory, and that "blind 
faith in principles" that he admires so, and with the utter ab- 
sence of all desire of property in the masses, the majority is the 
most dangerous tyrant this nation can have. But I will return 
to this subject after speaking of some things about here. 

One strange peculiarity of Yijes is that the lands here are 
common property. Some man in times past owned all this 
plain, and, of the hills adjoining, a quantity unknown to me : 
from their steepness and aridity it would seem the less the bet- 
ter. When he died it fell to his heirs without division. Some 
may have sold half their share, and in this way there are more 
than a hundred owners of this property. There are many cases 
of this kind in New Granada, and laws to regulate the improve- 
ment of the soil and other questions that must arise under this 
cumbrous co-proprietorship. It will be a very difficult thing to 
bring about a division. At present no one wishes it, for large 
parts of this fertile plain are yet untilled, and there are consid- 
erable parts of it which I have not, in these many days, explored 
either on horseback or afoot. It includes one or two detached 
hills in it. All the rest is level and fertile. 

The population of the district is 1160, most of whom live in 
the village, and nearly all of them near it on the plain. 

Once in the memory of man this people attempted a new 
church. They fairly began it and stopped. The Cura, I be- 
lieve, has not yet given up all hope of getting them at work on 
it again, but I see little prospect of it. He is the best preacher 



532 NEW GRANADA. 

I have heard in New Granada, where preaching is so rare, and 
preaching talent still rarer. At the time I heard him he was 
holding a protracted meeting, as we should say, that is, preach- 
ing every evening for more than a week, preparatory to the 
separation of Church and State. If it makes every priest work 
as hard as he did, the new arrangement will keep them from 
eating so much of the bread of idleness. 

Perhaps earlier it would have kept him from other evils also, 
for they say that in his leisure he got so attached to a damsel 
here that his conduct "became scandalous for even a priest. 
Finally, the authorities went to the parents of the Curita, as 
they called her, coining a feminine diminutive from cura, and 
told them that the girl could have employment as a servant in 
the beateria of Cali, and if she would not take up with that she 
should have a place in prison as a vagabond. So much care 
for the morals of a priest I have nowhere else seen, nor do I see 
the use in it, for they tell me that it would be necessary to send 
off six or eight girls more before they could get his morals up 
to the standard of decency. I ventured to joke his profession 
on account of this notorious weakness. He did not deny the 
impeachment, but only replied, " Somos hombres" — "we are 
men." 

Here I met with quite a familiar tropical plant for the first 
time, Curcus purgans, called friar's cathartic — purga de fraile. 
I suspect its spread over the globe as a weed has been aided by 
its convenience as a purgative without any other forethought 
than to drop a seed into the ground. I met with another inter- 
esting natural production here. I believe it was a veritable 
equis, perhaps the most venomous snake we have. He was 
nearly three feet long, and, as I was without weapon or boots, 
I let him alone. I think there can be little danger of a bite 
through a boot even of the thinnest leather. The softness of 
leather would be worse than thinness, as I think two thickness- 
es of stiff buckram would be almost a perfect protection. 

There is a hermit living in the hills near here. He is said 
to be over eighty, though he is quite smart and active. Old 
people are not numerous in New Granada. I have seen very 
few indeed ; and the revered class of genuine hermits I thought 
had died out in past centuries ; but, finding so much of past cen- 



VISIT TO THE HEEMIT. 533 

turies living about me, I resolved to see the "venerable man" 
with my own eyes. 

In the simplicity of my heart, I chose the sacred hours of the 
Sabbath for this pious pilgrimage, and was soon following up 
the north branch of the brook of Vijes, among the ledges from 
which it comes. How far I went I can not say. The path had 
become a little dimmer, but showed no disposition to die out or 
bifurcate, so I went on. Just as I was on the point of giving 
up, I saw a platanal, put, one would think, at the upper limit of 
the plantain. Still I saw no house, and went on ; upward, if 
not heavenward, was my way, till I turned a point of rock and 
came in sight of the hut. 

Three furious dogs came instantly bounding out at me. I 
confess I was surprised, for when one visits a hermit, he does 
not, as ever I heard, go armed against the hermit's dogs. Next 
came the hermit's boy running out after the dogs, and calling to 
them to come back. So I got safe to the house, where I found 
not only the hermit, but the hermit's woman and the hermit's 
family. I must say that in all this my feelings underwent 
something of a revulsion. A hermit ought to live in a cave, or, 
if there be none, at least in a hut constructed of the leafy boughs 
of trees ; but here was a mud cottage, as dirty as any other, and 
just like the poorest on the plain below. It faced, indeed, a 
little brook that ran down the hill, and at a convenient distance 
was a pretty miniature cascade, a rill that fell into it. 

I looked at the family, counted them, and estimated the mix- 
ture of blood in their veins. There was a daughter and two 
sons. The two oldest might be his, but the younger seemed to 
have met with some accident that threw a greater proportion of 
African blood into his veins. The hermit's woman was about 
forty, half his own age. She had been engaged in weaving a 
ruana. The loom was a square frame, of the width and half the 
length of a ruana, say three feet wide and two feet high. Threads 
of warp had been wound round and round it, as on a reel, the 
color being changed so as to produce the requisite stripes. The 
woof had been simply inserted by sheer industry, without any 
apparatus to separate the threads of the warp, and, of course, 
without a proper shuttle. When the web is thus completed, 
it is an endless piece, and if sewed up at one side would make 



534 NE W GRANADA. 

a seamless sack. Instead of this, it is cut open, and an open- 
ing cut in the centre; it is bound at the "raw edges," and he- 
comes a ruana. 

I solicitously assured the family that I had breakfasted, had 
taken chocolate, that I needed nothing more. All would not 
do. Even a Granadino, after a long walk like this, could " re- 
peat." The chocolate was brought me, with that abominable 
cheese already crumbed into it with the matron's own fingers. 
I resolved to make an effort, and I did. One thing made a 
greater effort necessary. I do not wish to make a hero of my- 
self in swallowing a single cup of cheese and chocolate, but I 
will tell you just how it was. Right in front of the cottage, 
where I sat on the poyo by the door (for I did not go in), was a 
pole covered with strings of beef that had just begun to dry. I 
asked the hermit why his beef looked so black, and particularly 
why, at this altitude, it smelt so strong. He told me that the 
cow had been killed by falling from a precipice. The darkness 
of the flesh, he assured me, was in consequence of the blood in 
it, which also increased the tendency to putrefaction, and ag- 
gravated the circumstance of his not having found the animal 
immediately after the accident. So I fished out the cheese with 
my spoon, and ate it, thankful that it was not beef, and sipped 
my chocolate, asking no questions for conscience' sake. 

The old man had been a lego, layman, or servant at the Fran- 
ciscan convent at Cali. When lime was wanting to build their 
beautiful church, he came out to Yijes and burned lime for them 
till the edifice was completed, " In consideration of which serv- 
ices," says a document he showed me, already some twenty-five 
years old, " he shall have the privilege of being buried as a Fran- 
ciscan monk when he dies." And now I am fully resigned that 
eremitism die with him from off the face of the earth before I 
see any thing more of it. 

I made a much more pleasant excursion to Espinal in the 
next nook below Vijes. About a mile from the town I began 
to climb the spur that bounds this plain on the north. I had 
a beautiful view at the top, and then descended to a long, nar- 
row plain, pinched in between the mountain and the river. 
Then came another hill, from the top of which I could look 
down on the plain of Espinal. I found afterward that at this 



HACIENDA DE ESPINAL. 535 

stage of water it is easier to get past the bases of these hills on 
the banks of the Cauca, by which course, on my return, I saved 
my horse much severe climbing. After reaching the plain, I 
passed a plantation of guadua ; a profitable investment of mon- 
ey, and a good use of that rare characteristic here, forethought. 
Never before have I met with this grass — here a necessary of 
life — except growing spontaneously. 

Espinal and Vijes may have been alike in their origin. All 
the difference between them may depend on the entailment of 
Espinal, which kept it unpopulated, and the property of a single 
heir, while undivided fractions of the Vijes land gave rise to a 
village, filled with heirs of the original proprietor, and assignees 
of those heirs, and heirs of those assignees, and so on. 

I had intended to strike into the Caldas Cordillera here, to 
join some friends that were gold-hunting there, but the family 
at Espinal assured me that their provisions were exhausted, and 
that they must return to-night, so I awaited them. 

Espinal has a splendid Canaveral, or cane-field, that has been 
in good bearing for some twenty years, costing them nothing but 
the fencing the while. They were meditating a water-mill for 
the cane. In examining the stream, I fell in with an interest- 
ing vine, Aristolochia reticulata. The flower is small ; the fruit 
of the size of a medium cucumber, but when ripe it dehisces 
into an elegant basket six inches in diameter. Another splen- 
did species, A. ringens, called saragoza, which I found at Car- 
tago and La Ribera, has a much larger flower. The history of 
a single flower shows how the botanist has occasionally to 
fight with circumstances. I picked the only flower I could 
find or had ever seen — a superb affair — on Saturday P.M., at 
Ribera. On Tuesday night I lost the flower at Chorro, two 
days from settlements. On Wednesday I threw away the leaves 
at Las Playas. On Monday morning I found the flower at ^El 
Chorro, and brought it home. On Tuesday I secured new 
leaves. During the week the ants stole the flower, and, as I 
could not get another, I again threw away the leaves. 

The history of a shell will illustrate also the chances a speci- 
men may run. I brought the shell in question to Ribera from 
beyond El Chorro. The ants run away with it. After I left, 
it was found and sent after me to La Paila. I left it there, 



536 NEW GRANADA. 

and it was sent to me in Cartago. There, in my hurry, it was 
left again. On my third night in the Quindio the mailman 
overtook me. Carefully drawing .a small packet from his ca- 
rriel (pocket slung "by a belt), he unrolled it, and behold, that 
same shell! 

The difficulties I have had in hanging my hammock in the 
house are well illustrated by the mode of doing it at Espinal. 
The beams were too close to the ceiling to permit the rope being 
thrown over. No ladder was to be had. I placed the table un- 
der a beam, set an arm-chair on the table, and a second arm- 
chair on the arms of the first, and then, standing on the arms of 
the second, I accomplished my purpose. To climb in, I put the 
table under the hammock, and a chair on the table. 

One more expedition remains for me. It is to Bolivia, the 
hacienda of Senor Caldas, to see his family, and to examine the 
approaches to the Pacific. I had seen a drove of cattle go up 
the brook toward the lime-kiln. I was told they were going to 
Panama to feed the laborers on fhe railroad. A gentleman of- 
fered himself as a guide, and we started one day on the same 
route. The wheel-road (for there was once a lime-cart at Vijes) 
soon changed to a bridle-road, and that to a path, and that to a 
goat-track, and still our course was upward on the rocky slope 
of a hill. A forest crowned the summit, but seemed not to ven- 
ture far down the side. Fire must once have destroyed the lower 
and drier woods : it was probably kindled to secure pasturage. 

Thus we toiled up for an hour or two. Then we stopped to 
drink at the stream. Here I noticed a knoll over the right bank 
of the brook, which we had been following up, though always 
far above it, and on the hillside on the left bank. There were 
cattle on that knoll, and I wondered how they got up there. 
I asked my guide, and he said, "We shall see ;" so we climbed 
the knoll, for there lay our road. We did not ride up, for that 
would have been cruel, had it been possible even. On its top 
we saw another knoll like it, and nearly as high above it. This 
must be ascended in the same way ; and then we mounted, and 
entered the woods. 

The woods were damp, and the road wet. Interesting trees 
overhung our path. Among the most interesting of these were 
a Lecythis, with dark crimson flowers, and for a fruit a five- 



HACIENDA DE BOLIVIA. 537 

celled woody box of more than two inches diameter. It was a 
small tree. A magnificent Melastomate tree, with large roseate 
flowers, and a Gesneriate herb, with "bright scarlet spots on the 
under sides of the leaves, are also found here. We at length 
came out on the clear land — llano — of the Pacific slope, and in 
sight of Bolivia, and at nearly the same altitude. To reach it 
we had to descend nearly a mile, cross a ravine, and reascend. 

Seiior Caldas is constructing a new road from his house 
through the woods, by which much of the steepness and dis- 
tance can be avoided, as well as this last ascent and descent. 
He took me to sea it. The first day I changed a considerable 
piece of the road through the woods, escaping a cruel steep, 
such as all men who have ever driven a carriage instinctively 
dread. The next day we went over his summit, and I found 
that all this way we had much lower ground on the right of us, 
so on the third day we changed this also. We then reviewed 
the whole through the woods, and I had the satisfaction of see- 
ing a route practicable to carriages traced from his house to 
within sight of the CaUca. But here I gave up. Yijes lay at 
our feet at an angle of depression as steep as the roof of a house. 
To build a carriage-road down would require the resources of a 
Napoleon ; a mule-path was all he had hoped. 

I was exceedingly pleased with La Senora de Caldas and the 
children, two pretty girls, the eldest of whom had red cheeks 
and intelligent eyes. She is by far the prettiest child I have 
seen in South America, if not, in fact, the only really pretty child 
of native origin. Like others here, however, she was not as af- 
fectionate as are our children. They are unused to any other 
caresses than permission to kiss a parent's hand, the only kiss- 
ing I have seen here. 

I met here also Senora Susana Pinzon de Vargas, and her 
sister, the fair Manuela Pinzon. They had come up to the cold 
for the benefit of Susana's babe. I can not conceive how any 
one can want so cold weather, for I suffered severely here. I 
was without bayeton, hammock, or night-flannel. I slept on 
the poyo of the sala with such little covering and bedding as the 
family could spare. This kept me from dying, although the 
thermometer was at 56°, and the house had never had a fire in 
it. Manuela and another young lady slept in a sort of separate 



538 NE W GKANADA. 

house ; Susana, being a matron, or for the convenience of the 
babe, slept in the family-room. Manuela complained also of 
sleeping cold. I suggested that she and her companion sleep 
within the same cover. She thought two persons could not 
learn to sleep in this way, and was surprised to hear that people 
at the North did not do themselves up into separate cocoons to 
sleep. 

Here is the coldest place where I have seen plantains grow. 
Potatoes, of course, grow finely. At the table of Senor Caldas 
I tried, for the first time in my life, an Aroid corm or "root," 
which may be Arum esculentum, a native of Africa. It is here 
called rascadera, because, I imagine, its acrid juice irritates the 
skin. In the Sandwich Islands it is the staff of life, and called 
taro ; in Louisiana the negroes eat it under the name of potano 
(Sp.), tannier (Fr.). I found it quite palatable. Senor Caldas 
is quite a gardener, but a large part of his garden is devoted to 
pinks. His coffee looked the best of any I have seen, and 
must differ greatly in flavor from that of the plains below. 

The acequia that irrigates his garden and supplies his kitch- 
en supplies a bath too. This is a deep square vat in the open 
garden, simply dug in the ground and nothing more. The idea 
of an immersion at this temperature was enough to make me 
shiver. He once attempted to drown an ant-hill in his garden 
by means of this acequia. It swallowed all the stream readily, 
but produced no results. The laborers went on shearing pieces 
from leaves as before. They were not to be drowned. What 
became of the water ? This mystery was solved by seeing, a 
quarter of a mile down the hill, all the water of the acequia 
gush out of the ground at a drain his enemies had prepared for 
any such contingency. He then set two peons to dig for the 
mother-ant, a misshapen being more than two inches long, in- 
capable of locomotion, whose whole faculties seem concentrated 
in the work of reproduction. They dug for two days, and prob- 
ably killed her unawares, for after they gave up the ants were 
effectually subdued. 

In the garden I saw one of those curious Indian graves 
called a guaca. They are worthy of a more complete investi- 
gation than I have been able to give them, for they differ from 
every thing I have seen or heard of. Some are simple square 



RAILROAD TO THE PACIFIC. 53) 

pits excavated in the ground, covered over first with logs and 
then with earth. Others have side excavations in them, and 
very often small passages running from one to another. Bones 
and relics are found in them, of course, hut I find very few of 
them in the hands of people here. They are diligently hunt- 
ed for gold. A man who has a passion for this (and it very 
naturally becomes a mental infirmity) is called a guaquero. 

As the guadua does not grow up here nor yet caiia brava, nor 
chusquea, Seiior Caldas has been perplexed for fencing materi- 
als. A Western settler, with axe, maul, and wedges, would soon 
show him how rails were made, but such things are unknown 
in New Granada. As a substitute, he has chosen stalks of 
maize. They are secured erect, somewhat after the manner of 
picket fence, and answer well. Here alone have I seen straw- 
berries cultivated, but it was not the season for them. The 
species here, as at Bogota, is Fragaria vesca, the same as ours. 

Sefior Caldas thinks, under peculiar circumstances, the Pa- 
cific Ocean is visible from near the house at sunset. I doubt 
it. We took a long ride in order to get a good view of the val- 
ley of this branch of the Dagua. I examined well the ground 
from where I had explored in my trip up from San Marcos, 
which spot was fully in sight of here, but far below us. We 
could see a hill above Juntas, as I was told. I have no doubt 
remaining that a good carriage-road can be built from the fer- 
tile plains of the Cauca to the tide-waters of the Pacific, so that 
the teamster may drink of the muddy Cauca in the morning, 
and at night taste the brackish waters of the Pacific. 

Can a railroad be put here? As a physical question of 
grades and curves, I answer, I have little doubt of it. Will it 
pay ? That is a serious question. I answer, not at once ; and 
never while the government is what it is. That the time will 
come when the Cauca will be connected with the Pacific, and 
the Magdalena by railroad, I strongly hope ; but there are great 
difficulties in the way. 

The most formidable physical difficulty is in the unhealthy 
nature of the Pacific coast. It is a net-work of muddy creeks 
and islands, as bad, perhaps, as the west coast of Africa. If a 
town could be located west of it all, it might be healthy, and 
from such a point cultivation might spread to the east. Bad as 



540 NEW GRANADA. 

Buenaventura is, its business must increase with the growth of 
Panama, Oregon, and California. Could the Cauca have peace, 
and I now hope it will, the productions and trade must also be 
stimulated from this source. Here I stand, not three days from 
Panama, and the valley behind me has held a population equal 
to all that New Granada now has. Even west of me are fertile 
and healthy lands not occupied. The population of the whole 
canton that lies on the Pacific is 3338. The belt of malaria 
must be broken — it shall be. 

But there is a moral difficulty. This people love to dance, 
but they hate to work. How will you induce them? With 
gold ? The line of the road may run through the richest gold 
deposit of the world. How can you hire cutting and filling done 
where the earth contains an ounce to the bushel ? Hunger can 
not urge them, nor cold, nor nakedness ; and among the rights 
most sedulously guarded by the theories of the ultra-republican 
is the right to be a vagabond. These theorists are in favor of 
exempting the improvident and indolent from all burdens. He 
buys no land, and often pays no rent. He votes, and pays no 
taxes. The nation is bent on repealing, as soon as they are 
able, every tax that now yields any thing. They have abol- 
ished tithes, of which it cost four fifths to collect the remainder. 
Excise on spirits and tobacco have gone. Salt and stamps must 
go. The vagabond gives no notes and eschews law, so he pays 
no stamp-tax. He must eat salt, and here he pays a tax of a 
cent or two a year. The plan for the future is to assess all tax- 
es on incomes that exceed a certain amount. This will let him 
clear. A poll-tax is a barbarism. So little does he use of for- 
eign goods, that, even while the impost system remains, almost 
nothing is exacted from him under it. The gross revenue of 
the nation is less than half a dollar a head, and this by loading 
the wealth of the nation as heavily as it can bear, while unthriffc 
and indolence go scot free. 

Again, there is no stability in the government. I do not now 
speak of revolutions, for the last two were unsuccessful, and I 
think we have seen the last of them ; but the theory of their 
government is against stability. Whether there ever was a 
worse Constitution than the present*! know not. Its adoption 
was an infamous lie of the Obando administration, to which the 



PROSPECTS OF NEW GRANADA. 541 

nation assented. The Liberal Congress of 1851 made a Con- 
stitution which the Congress of 1853 had a right to adopt or re- 
ject. It did neither : it altered it till it lost its identity, then 
voted that it was the same, and adopted it. Then the nation 
shouted for joy, and cried, "At last the true republic has come !" 

The executive is shorn of its powers. Both houses are 
chosen on the same ticket, and their deliberating in two cham- 
bers is a farce, for the absolute majority of the whole Congress 
voting in joint meeting carries every point against the will, it 
may be, of all the Senate, and in spite of any executive veto. 

And changes the most stupendous, such as it would take twen- 
ty years to bring about in England, are the work of a single week, 
perhaps. In England, neither the size, shape, nor number of 
the counties has changed within a century. If there has been 
a year without a variation of the provinces of New Granada, I 
am not aware of it. It would be harder to abolish the troy 
pound in England than to overthrow twice the whole metrical 
system of New Granada. 

What will be the end of these things ? I conjecture bank- 
ruptcy. The expenditures are double the revenue ; but they are 
not to be so when their plans are perfected ! I see no remedy 
but to plunge back into the barbarian darkness of the United 
States, or even beyond them. But to restore poll-taxes, impris- 
onment for debt, passports, and vagrancy laws, ordaining that 
the labor of man shall build roads, bridges, school-houses, ay, 
and prisons too, even though he have no wish to travel, learn, 
nor yet to be imprisoned, would be enough to make a theorist 
like Samper rave ; and I fear it will not be done till they have 
suffered greater calamities than they have felt since the Span- 
iard left their shores. 

Such conclusions grieve me, for I love the Granadan race. 
These pages testify to an uninterrupted series of kind acts of 
them toward me — kindness that I can never repay. I can hard- 
ly mention a single reasonable request of mine neglected — not 
one refused. Even many unreasonable ones, as I afterward 
knew them to be, were granted, often at an inconvenience that 
I greatly regretted. The authorities, too, have been as kind as 
private individuals. All sorts of documents have been furnish- 
ed me, even by offices that had to send to Bogota to replace 



542 NEW GEANADA. 

those spared me. Nothing has been withholden me that a trav- 
eler could ask. 

I have not made them the returns I would have wished. I 
would have gladly pointed them more directly to a purer relig- 
ion that can remedy the evils they are struggling with ; "but while 
I could profess to be a communicant of a Protestant church, cir- 
cumstances rendered it unadvisable to do more. And now, in 
enlisting the sympathies of our own people, I am doing what I 
can. 

To tell the truth of them, I have been obliged to speak of their 
faults and deficiencies. But, after all, I here boldly declare the 
Granadinos a highly moral people. I speak not of the Scotch 
and English standard of morality ; that is not fair. They are 
of a religion highly adverse in its institutions to the laws of 
chastity, and in this they must be compared with Catholic coun- 
tries. Now grant that the proportion of illegitimate births be 
33 per cent., and I think it must be less, then it is the same 
as that of Paris. In Brussels it is 35 per cent. ; in Munich, 
48 ; in Vienna, 51 ; and, I believe, in sacred Rome, far worse. 
Suppose, then, that New Granada is as defective as Paris, the 
most moral of these cities. You must recollect that, when Paris 
was yet a great city, unmarried priests, corrupt monks, and un- 
restrained civil and military officers were forming a new code of 
decency and morality for simple, half-naked Indian converts and 
subjects. What marvel if it be as loose as that of Paris ? 

Again, as to the crimes against life, I suppose, in all the na- 
tion, there are not a fifth as many murders as in New York city 
alone ! Probably a single year in California has witnessed as 
many murders as have been perpetrated in New Granada, among 
two millions and a quarter of all races, since it has had its place 
among nations. I have more than once had to blush for the 
ruffianism of the scum of our nation, like which nothing can be 
found in the very worst population of New Granada. But again 
to figures. I can not estimate the murders in New Granada at 
more than 3 per million per annum. The commitments for mur- 
der in England are 4 per million ; in Belgium, 18 ; Ireland, 19; 
Sardinia, 20 ; France, 34 ; Austria, 36 ; Lombardy, 46 ; Tus- 
cany, 56 ; Bavaria, 68 ; Sicily, 90 ; the dominion of the Pope, 
113 ; and Naples, 174. 



ANNIVERSARY OF THE CRUCIFIXION. 543 

Say I not well, then, that the Granadinos deserve a high 
place among the nations of the earth in point of moral charac- 
ter ? And we, especially, owe them our respect and esteem. 
The conduct of the government at Bogota in relation to our 
Isthmus transit has always been more than generous — it has 
been noble ; and to us they look for examples of government — 
to us for their closest allies in trade. And, lastly, we two, of 
all the nations of the earth, are without any established church, 
granting equal rights to all men of all creeds. Long may we 
remain so, but not long alone. Viva, pues, viva la Nueva 
Granada ! 



CHAPTER XXXIY. 

SUPPLEMENTARY. 



Date of Crucifixion. — Lent. — The purple Curtain. — Blessing Palm-leaves. — 
Ass in Church. — Pasos. — Nazarenos. — La Resena. — White Curtain rent. — 
A speaking Trumpet. — Lamentations. — Monumentos. — Good Friday. — Great 
Curtain Rent on Saturday. — Paschal Sunday. — Resurrection Scene. — Qui 
Bono ? — A Revolution possible. — A Murder. — Bochinche of Good Friday. — 
Coup d'etat. — Scenes at the Palace. — Constitution abolished. — Invasion of 
Honda and Mesa. — American Legation stormed. — Battle of Cipaquira. — Af- 
fairs of the Cauca. — Surprise at Guaduas. — Scaling Tequendama with Cannon. 
— Battle of Boza. — Storming of Bogota. — Fall of Melo. — The next President. 

My task is done. It has not been as well done as I wish, 
but it is done faithfully and conscientiously. I have told you 
all I have seen with a patience and a faithful minuteness, only 
restrained by the fear of being tedious beyond endurance. I 
have reserved for this supplementary chapter only events on and 
since Palm Sunday, April 9th, 1854, including chiefly Holy 
Week at Bogota, and the Revolution of 1854. 

The Jews began their year with the first appearance of the 
new moon after the vernal equinox. The 14th day of the year 
(at full moon, of course) was the Passover. Our Savior was 
crucified on the 15th day of their year, on the day after the full 
moon. All this is known, and not left to conjecture, as is the 
anniversary of Christ's birth, which was most probably in the 
warmer part of the year, when shepherds spent the night in the 
open air. 

The Romish and English Churches ordain the annual cele- 



544 NEW GRANADA. 

bration of the death of Christ. They call the Friday nearest 
the Passover Holy Friday or Good Friday, and make it the an- 
niversary of the Crucifixion. 

A period beginning forty-four days before is Lent — Cuaresma. 
It begins on Wednesday, and that day is called Ash Wednes- 
day, because priests put ashes on the foreheads of as many as ap- 
ply, which some contrive to keep on for several days. Lent con- 
tains forty fasting days, and every Friday and the last Thursday 
are rigid fasts. No marriages are allowed in Lent. Sunday be- 
fore Good Friday is called Palm Sunday, the week succeeding 
is called Passion Week, and the Sabbath closing the whole is 
called the Paschal Sunday. Palm Sunday is adopted as the an- 
niversary of Christ's entry into Jerusalem, in order to make the 
festival begin and end with a Sunday, as is most convenient for 
celebrations. From Good Friday, the time of the Ascension 
of our Lord (40 days) and the Pentecost (50 days) are reckoned. 
Those days which thus depend on the moon, and vary, there- 
fore, as to month and day, are called Movable Feasts. 

The splendors of Kome are not to be expected in a city of 
40,000, even though it has borne for 300 years the title of City 
of the Holy Faith — Santa Fe. So poor is the Church here, 
and so indolent the priesthood, that the most to be expected is 
caricature and puerile imitation. 

Christmas and Corpus Christi are greater days with the Bo- 
gotanos — Corpus particularly — than any one of the eight days 
of Holy Week, which still is, as it ought to be, the greatest fes- 
tival of the year. All the week before, the busy note of prep- 
aration is heard. Images must be taken down, cleaned, re- 
paired, and mustered. So the chief altar of every church is 
veiled with a large purple curtain, which hangs immovable till 
rent on Holy Saturday. 

The more enlightened here appear ashamed of the perform- 
ances, and seemed desirous that some of them should escape my 
notice and my irreverent pen ; and, as there is but one centre 
of attraction at once, you must know not only what to look for, 
but where it is. I had nearly lost the principal piece in Palm 
Sunday for want of due notice, and the family were evidently 
little pleased that I had got wind of it. 

I went to San Francisco at 8. With a condescension that 



PALM SUNDAY. 545 

all here show to strangers, I was permitted to insinuate myself 
into an immense crowd, and took my stand on one of the lines 
of benches extending from the front door to the high altar. 

On the elevated platform of that altar, in a dense crowd of 
boys of from 10 to 15 years of age, were several priests, chant- 
ing a blessing on some 20 palm-leaves, cut, braided, trimmed, 
and some of them ornamented with flowers. The crowd thick- 
ens, some noise ensues, and the priests have to push violently, 
but good-humor prevails. 

Now an image is descending around one edge of the purple 
curtain. Preceded by the palm-leaves, it is advancing toward 
the door. It is on the back of a live ass. I should call it the 
figure of a young woman, dressed in purple, with long auburn 
hair (not of Spanish origin) on its shoulders in profuse curls. 
On the head is a golden glory, with rays diverging in three di- 
rections. It has no beard. It rides astride, with a monk on 
each side to hold it on. An ass-colt, as large as a small calf, 
follows, so crowded upon by boys that I hardly saw it. Pre- 
ceded by the palm-leaves, and accompanied by singing monks, 
the image turned and went out of the mercy door, which opens 
into a patio of the convent. From there it entered the street, 
and came to the front door of the church, which was shut. Af- 
ter singing within and without, the door opened, and the image 
passed up to the sacristia. 

I followed. Some stout monks unloaded the ass as they 
would take off a forked log, pushing the garments aside very ir- 
reverently, and lugged the heavy image off up into the camarin, 
and locked the door. 

A stout Philadelphian outside had something thrown at his 
hat for not taking it off to the procession, but nothing farther 
was done, and he kept on his hat. 

At 4 P.M. I saw another procession. On a stage — anda — 
was placed a figure of Christ on the Cross, and two female fig- 
ures, with long hair and rich velvet dresses, but not well got up. 
They are said, to represent the Virgin and the Apostle John. 
A figure or a group, with the stage that holds it, is called apaso. 
This, which I call paso No. 2, was borne by 14 men. They 
had black bags on their heads, with holes cut to see out of. The 
.bags are called capirotes, and the wearers Nazarenos. They 

Mm 



546 NEW GKANADA. 

wore a tunic of glazed black cotton, tied round the waist with a 
rope of cabuya. The rope passed round and round, making a 
white belt sometimes six inches wide. On their shoulders they 
wore panolones or shawls borrowed of their female friends. A 
white piece of cotton for a handkerchief, tucked under the gir- 
dle, or a monstrous string of beads (never smaller than that seen 
peeping from beneath the Jesuit's dress on page 193), a cushion 
on the shoulder, and alpargatas on the feet, complete the equip- 
ment of the Nazareno. Each had a crutch in his hand, on 
which to rest the paso at pauses. 

The paso was preceded by boys bearing a cross and ciriales, 
and by three boys ringing hand-bells. The last wore cucu- 
ruchos. These are conical black caps, thirty inches high, cov- 
ering the face, and with holes for the eyes. After the paso 
came a band of music, and a disk borne by the alferez, the 
proud man that had paid for the wax burned in the procession. 
Two peons bore the candle-box, a sort of hand-barrow painted 
brown. The gentlemen who made up the procession were head- 
ed by the Cura of Las Nieves, Padre Gutierrez, father to the 
present gobernador of the province. In the bareheaded crowd, 
of both sexes and all conditions, that surrounded the procession, 
I was surprised and sorry to see a respectable American gen- 
tleman. 

The procession entered several churches, and prayers were 
said. On its return home to Las Nieves an Ave was said for 
the founder of the church, " should he still chance to be in Pur- 
gatory," after a terrible roasting of near three hundred years. 

On Monday, P.M., a much larger procession set out from Las 
Nieves with three candle-boxes, several bands of music, and 
eight pasos, viz. : 

No. 3. A black cross, with a strip of white cloth on the arms, 
and flowers at the foot. 

No. 4. The Good Shepherd : the Savior, a lamb on his shoul- 
ders, its feet tied with a cord, the ends of which were held by 
two stout angels, in form of women with wings. 

No. 5. The Last Supper : Savior and disciples in vestments 
for mass, looking like an omnibus with thirteen priests inside, 
one of them drunk. This was John, copied from Da Vinci, with 
his head inclined as no one holds it in riding. It was in very 
bad taste, and took thirty Nazarenos to carry it. 



LA RESENA. 547 

No. 6. Scourging : hands tied to a pillar thirty inches high ; 
face not indicative of suffering ; body naked to the waist, and 
the back one mass of raw dried flesh. Two Roman soldiers, 
with noses terribly aquiline, and upraised scourge, not in the at- 
titude of striking. The soldiers are called Judios — Jews. 

No. 7. Savior, richly dressed, fallen under his cross : two 
soldiers, and a boy with hammer and nails, evidently as light 
as cork, in a basket on his shoulder. 

No. 8. The Nailing to the Cross, it is said : it could not be 
well seen from any possible position. 

No. 2. As yesterday. 

No. 9. Dolores : an isosceles triangle of gorgeous cloth, lace, 
and spangles. Angle at the apex from 30° to 40°. On the 
triangle is a beautiful head, with flowing hair. On the breast 
of the figure a silver heart, transfixed with a silver sword. 

TUESDAY MORNING. — LA RESE2JA AT THE CATHEDRAL. 

This was preceded by the novelty of three priests saying- 
three masses at the same altar — a temporary one in the back of 
the building — while a grand mass was performing at a tempo- 
rary altar before the purple curtain of the high altar. Next 
came music from hired performers in the orchestra on top of the 
choir, and from the canonigos in the choir. 

Part of the chapter slowly advanced toward the altar. Each 
canonigo wore on his head a hood that would hold a bushel. 
In addition to their usual robes of white muslin over black, they 
wore black gowns, open in front, with trains 3 or 4 yards long. 
Dr. Herran, the head of the Granadan Church, provisor then and 
archbishop now, was at their head, with an enormous silk ban- 
ner, 2 yards by 3. It was black, and had a plain red cross in 
the centre. He ascended the platform, and they stood in a row 
at the foot of its stairs, on which a clean cloth had been spread. 

He waved his banner for a long time, while solemn music 
came from the orchestra. He managed tolerably well to keep 
his train extended in all his movements. Twice he folded his 
banner and rested it against the altar, while he knelt at its 
foot. As he was waving it for a third time, a thundering crash 
from the choir started me. It was made by throwing down the 
Iiinged seats in the stalls, or by the stamp of the feet of musi- 



548 NEW GEANADA. 

cians on loose boards. At that instant the canonigos had fallen 
prostrate on the steps, and all you saw was six gigantic figures, 
extending from the third step of the altar back some 20 feet. 
The red cross still waved over them ; all else seemed lifeless. 
Long after, they arose ; six train-bearers gathered up their robes, 
and they retired to the choir. 

This was the only performance in the whole week, or that I 
have ever seen in a Catholic church, that ever made any solemn 
impression on me. All else was puerile, and, when not pain- 
fully unfitting, ridiculous. More music succeeded, and a triplet 
of masses at that temporary back altar, the only ornamented 
place in the Cathedral. 

Tuesday, P.M., was another procession, much like that of 
Monday, with seven pasos, viz. : 

No. 10. A plain cross, much like No. 3. 

No. 11. Child with lamb on his shoulders. 

No. 12. Christ with the Doctors. A boy of five standing in 
a chair ; three men. 

No. 13. Christ and the Cyrenean. Divine face bruised ; rich 
dress unruffled; Cyrenean scantily dressed, with turban on, not 
touching the cross ; soldier before them blowing a trumpet. 

No. 14. Scourging. Two soldiers, one with a spike made of 
half-inch iron between his lips. 

No. 15. Crucifixion. Three figures nearly nude : that in the 
centre nailed to a cross, the others tied. From the wounded 
side of the centre figure a blue and a white ribbon (blood and 
water) proceed to two cups in the hands of little angels in the 
front of the anda. The side figures have a wound on each leg. 
Two Marys, and a John, who was like a woman, except a chin 
smooth shaven. 

No. 16. Dolores: inferior to No. 9. Two little angels held 
her hands. Troops, music, and other accompaniments as usual. 
Cucuruchos worn by little boys of 7 or 8. 

On Wednesday, A.M., Kesena repeated at the Cathedral. It 
was preceded by a new and imposing ceremony. A white cur- 
tain was drawn in front of the platform of the high altar, with 
much space between that and the larger purple one that covers 
the altar from roof to floor. A protracted mass was celebrat- 
ing, when suddenly . a colossal fire-cracker exploded, and the 



THE SENTENCE. 549 

vail Was rent, and displayed a crucified figure of the size of life : 
then succeeded the Resena as yesterday. 

Wednesday, P.M., was the greatest piece of charlatanry ex- 
cept the ass in church. Accordingly, the church of San Agus- 
tin, where it came off, was densely filled. By a politeness in 
which I find the Agustinians to excel all others, I had a com- 
fortable seat on the platform. A young monk preached on the 
contumely which Christ suffered. When he spoke of his con- 
demnation, he said, "Listen to his sentence." Thereupon a 
voice, hidden in the roof, began speaking through a speaking- 
trumpet the words, "I, Pontius Pilate, Governor of Judea," etc., 
etc., in Spanish, of course, prolonging his vowels, and pausing 
every eight or ten syllables for breath ; and it was to hear this 
that the vast crowd were thronging, treading on each other, 
pushing, steaming, and corrupting the air ; but in all the crowd 
there was, I think, but one person voluntarily pushing or mo- 
lesting others ; except in his neighborhood, all was still and or- 
derly. 

After much delay, the pasos for a procession were got through 
the crowd and mustered in the street. The pasos were, 

No. 17. A cross, nearly like No. 3. 

No. 18. The Seizure : Judas kissing ; a soldier with a pair 
of blacksmith's tongs entangled in the long hair of the Savior ; 
Malchus on his back, his ear yet whole ; a wrathful apostle over 
him with a machete. 

No. 19. The Mockery: one soldier tearing the Savior's hair, 
another standing behind him with a very knotty club, copied 
from the Spanish playing-cards. 

No. 20. St. Veronica holding by two corners the handkerchief 
with which she had wiped the Lord's face ; three very bad por- 
traits of the sacred face on the handkerchief. 

No. 13. With the addition of a smoking-cap to the head of 
the Cyrenean in place of the turban. 

No. 21. Crucifixion : much like 15, except the thieves were 
absent, and the white and blue ribbons terminated in apothe- 
caries' minim glasses. 

No. 22. Dolores : the extreme tail of her dress twisted and 
curled up. On the very tip stood a funny little angel in black, 
with a black feather in his cap. 



550 NE W GRANADA. 

No. 23. A shaving or splinter of the very cross in a cus- 
todia, placed in a silver shrine borne by canonigos. Three com- 
panies of soldiers bore candles in the procession, and General 
Melo was alferez, and bore the estandarte that signified that he 
had supplied the wax. 

On Wednesday night Lamentations were sung at the Cathe- 
dral by the orchestra, and the Tinieblas by the chapter. A row 
of candles were extinguished one by one during the tinieblas or 
shadows. Six tall candles at the altar were constructed to go 
out spontaneously, and those in the choir or orchestra were also 
extinguished, but there was still burning enough to see a little. 
The music reminded me of the .ZEolian harp, and also of the 
howling of dogs at midnight. It was, on the whole, the most 
agreeable part of a tedious performance. 

About 9 commenced the Miserere. The hired musicians sung 
this by a single candle, so placed as to illuminate only the book. 
This music is good, but is, I think, overrated. Zingarelli's 
Miserere, in our " Mozart Collection," is far superior to it. As 
many seemed to have gone to see the lights put out as to hear 
the music. I was very tired before I left. 

Holy Thuesday. — This is indeed a great day. No wafer 
can be consecrated at the mass on Good Friday, so at the mass 
to-day two wafers are consecrated, and the one for to-morrow 
is kept in great parade, generally at a side altar, tricked out 
in all manner of finery. It is called a monumento. Every 
body visits the monumentos. I was at it all day and all the 
evening, and visited eighteen of them. They took the form of 
pasteboard edifices, grottoes, staircases, etc. The edifice at San- 
ta Ines had a fine dome on top, and filled the whole end of the 
church. At night it blazed with 170 candles : it had no images. 
Many others were really pretty. 

The wafer of the Cathedral is kept under a guard of four sol- 
diers, like the corpse of a general. It is placed with great pomp 
in a silver chest locked with a golden key. The keeping of 
this key is the highest honor. This year it fell to President 
Obando. The keeper of the key wears it on his neck by a gold- 
en chain, and delivers it up at Friday's mass with great cere- 
mony. On one occasion they say that the key-keeper went to 
Tunja in the interim, committed a murder, and returned in sea- 



HOLY THURSDAY. 551 

son to deliver up the key in person. The distance he must 
have traveled was 211 miles : it is 74 hours travel for the mail ! 
The distance is not exaggerated, hut the story may he false. 

Up to the consecration in the mass to-day the hells have been 
in a continual state of excitement, knowing no rest except at 
night. Now, saving that the Cathedral clock still strikes the 
hours, all are silent, even to the hand-hells at the altar. In the 
place of hells are used matracas, somewhat like, if not identical 
with, the watchman's rattle. 

In the afternoon occurred at the Cathedral the washing of the 
feet of twelve poor men by Dr. Herran, hut this I did not see 
for want of due notice. 

Another procession set out from La Vera Cruz, one of the 
chapels in the monastery of San Francisco. Though it had but 
five pasos, the character of the persons who followed them made 
it the most interesting procession of the week. The pasos were, 

No. 24. A cross, much like No. 3. 

No. 25. The Garden : the Lord kneeling among the flowers 
before a bush of the most splendid terrestrial mistletoe, Lo- 
ranthus Mutisii, with a little angel in the top of the bush. N.B. 
Mutis always had the most beautiful species in the genus named 
after him. I ached to get hold of these scarlet flowers, six inches 
long, for I had then never found more of that species than a 
single mangled flower in the street. 

No. 26. Bearing the Cross : single figure, half size. 

No. 27. Christ at the Pillar : he has turned his back to it, 
his hands still being tied to it. It is, as always, thirty inches 
high. Peter is kneeling before his Lord. 

No. 28. The Sentence : Savior ; Pilate ; two soldiers ; table ; 
modern writing implements ; sentence, written on paper in Span- 
ish; water-pitcher. 

Here followed the merchants, with candles and music preced- 
ing their image of the Savior (No. 29), not made up of money- 
bags, with small gold coins for eyes. 

Next, the students of the Colegio of Santo Tomas, in barretes 
— clerical caps — gowns, and the broad white collar of their 
school. Following them was (No. 30) their heavy, beautiful 
bronze crucifix. 

Lastly and chiefly came the ladies OF Bogota, in black hair, 



552 NEW GRANADA. 

eyes ditto, and black lace veils on their heads, preceding their 
paso (No. 31), the Virgin. I never had imagined that there was 
so much beauty in Bogota. 

The military closed the procession. 

Good Feiday is a commemoration of the most memorable 
day in the history of our globe — the Fourth of July of the uni- 
verse ; but probably we shall never be certain of the precise day 
of the year on which it occurred, as we do not certainly know 
the exact year. Even if we knew it, ought human additions be 
made to divine ordinances for celebrating the great event? I 
expected for to-day solemn appeals to the senses ; that, in the 
Cathedral, dirges, darkness, and dumb show should prevail 
" from the sixth to the ninth hour." Unfortunately, the Church 
differs from me ; "so much the worse for the Church." 

The morning mass has three attractions : first, the officiating 
priest and his two assistants prostrate themselves at the altar, 
and lie there covered up with a purple cloth for some time ; sec- 
ondly, the adoration of the Cross, which is laid before the altar 
on a cushion, with a money-dish at its side. After the priests, 
many of the most respectable citizens go up two and two, kneel 
three times, kiss the cross, put money in the dish, and retire. 
Thirdly, the taking the wafer from the monumento. President 
Obando did not appear this morning, and the key was on the 
neck of the dean of the chapter. The mass is earlier than usu- 
al, with the consecration and other parts omitted, and no extra 
mass is allowed this day. 

It was expected by some that the Cathedral services would 
include a series of sermons through the three hours of agony, 
but, since the re-expulsion of the Jesuits, it is difficult to find 
preachers enough. I found the property-men, as a theatre-goer 
would call them, hard at work. When they were through, and 
the vast edifice moderately full, the canonigo Saavedra, a bitter 
enemy of the late lamented Archbishop Mosquera, began a ser- 
mon, which I could make nothing of on account of distance and 
noise. Twice he sharply rebuked the crowd, which at length 
became so dense as to fix every component of it immovably. 

The whole stage was covered, mostly with boys. Two lad- 
ders projected above the level of their heads, and also the cucu- 
ruchos of various boys. As it was nearly a yard from " the 



GOOD FRIDAY. 553 

pivot of the skull" to the top of the cucuracho, its point exag- 
gerated the motions of the unseen head of the wearer in a very- 
ludicrous manner. 

At length the two ladders were applied to a cross planted in 
the platform, having on it a figure slightly under size. Two 
priests ascended : one passed a cloth round the body, the other 
drew out the nails. They lowered the body, carried it to the 
feet of an image of the Virgin, and then laid it in a splendid 
sarcophagus, all silver and tortoise-shell, of the shape and size 
of a bathing-tub, and filled with costly pillows. The sermon 
was done, and the vast Cathedral relieved of its crowd. I es- 
caped to open air, and placed myself in wait for the procession 
in the Calle Real. 

Paso 32 was a simple cross, much like No. 3. 

No. 33 was a representation of the holy winding-sheet, which 
retains the figure of a human body on it, and, strangely enough, 
is yet in existence! The representation was stretched on a 
frame like a screen. The figure was visible on both sides, and 
was too naked to be decent, and too dirty to be ornamental. 

No. 34. St. John the Evangelist. 

No. 35. Mary Magdalene. 

No. 36. The Sarcophagus, with Joseph of Arimathea and Nic- 
odemus at the head and foot. It was followed by the large black 
flag, with crimson cross, used in the Resena. 

No. 37. Our Lady of the Solitude, by far the most costly 
image in Bogota. The figures on the dress are said to be 
wrought in real diamonds and other precious stones. Six little 
angels in black lace surrounded the principal figure. 

These all went to La Vera Cruz, where the sarcophagus was 
taken from the anda and deposited there. They started on their 
return, when the programme was broken in upon by the first 
bochinche — riot — which was a precursor of scenes yet to follow, 
and in connection with which it will be described. Some think 
that there was a design to despoil Soledad of her jewels in the 
melee. I do not believe it. She and all the rest escaped safe 
to the Cathedral, except Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, 
who took refuge in San Francisco. 

I omit for the present the incongruous events of the afternoon. 
The Lamentations were to be succeeded by a sermon from a Do- 



554 NEW GEANADA. 

minican friar, who had the reputation of being long-winded. I 
went, and found the front door of the Cathedral closed for fear 
of the mob. Unfortunately, I found the mercy-door open, and 
entered very late, but soon enough. The sermon commenced at 
nine. The subject was " the Sorrows of Our Lady of the Sol- 
itude after the death of Christ." I had secured a seat facing 
the pulpit. The odor of unwashed skins, or, perhaps, of ill-con- 
ditioned ulcers, made it almost untenable ; and at last, finding 
that the fleas had converted the floor where the women sat into 
a mart of human blood, and unwilling myself to be a martyr to 
them, I went home. 

Gloeia Mass was Saturday, at 8 A.M. Numerous cere- 
monies of annual occurrence were performed. Fire was struck 
with flint and steel, and the huge Paschal candle, with five lumps 
of incense sticking to it, was lighted. Holy oil and holy water 
were consecrated. The priests lay down again as yesterday* 
and were covered up a long while. They then went to the 
sacristia, and came back in white vestments. 

As the mass proceeded the purple veil was torn asunder, and, 
an instant after, the huge fire-cracker went off again, having 
hung fire a little ; the hand-bell at the altar broke loose, and 
rang as if it would never stop ; the bells of all sizes, whole and 
cracked, from this tower and all others, joined in ; and well did 
they make amends for two days' silence. Now the people be- 
gan to disperse ; soon the mass closed, and I went home, glad 
that there were no more ceremonies to be observed to-day. 

Paschal Sunday. — Long before light I was in the streets, 
prompted by a spirit of diligence rather than of curiosity. Al- 
ready at Santo Domingo were women kneeling before the door, 
which was not to be opened for an hour. It had rained in the 
night, and the morning air was damp and raw. At Vera Cruz 
I found lights within, the doors barred, and a large crowd about 
them. At 4 they were opened. 

At the altar was a splendid scene. There was the tortoise-shell 
crib, with a figure standing in it much larger than the one put 
in on Friday. It had a red flag in the left hand, and the right 
pointed upward. At each side was a figure of a soldier, tum- 
bled back and propped up, but not in the attitude of a falling- 
man. I heard mass, went home, and to bed again. 



PASCHAL SUNDAY. 555 

At 8 I was again in the street, when a Virgin (paso 38) went 
to meet the figure in the sarcophagus (No. 39). A man went 
before firing rocket-crackers — cohetes — and a large silver double 
cross — cruz alta — which had opened every procession muffled, 
was now disclosed. The streets were fuller than ever. I 
thought it useless to try to enter the Cathedral, but made the 
attempt. To my surprise, I found little difficulty, thanks to the 
innate politeness of the meanest Granadino. I even succeeded 
in reaching my favorite post on top of the choir in front of the 
orchestra. Here I faithfully sat the great mass out, but saw 
nothing particularly interesting to record. 

On leaving, I asked a priest where I could hear a sermon. He 
told me he thought none would be preached that day in all Bo- 
gota. I learned afterward that there would be one in the con- 
vent of Santo Domingo at night. I went, and found a good 
seat. From this I was driven by the odor of my next neigh- 
bor. I could find no other, would not stand, and came away. 
Thus ended my Holy Week. 

As to the effects on my own mind, the most striking is utter 
fatigue and disappointment. There were a few good faces in 
the figures ; a very few were quite good ; but true attitudes, 
that did not set the laws of gravity and the principles of anato- 
my at defiance, were rare indeed ; and had there been even a 
masterpiece of art, it would quite probably have escaped notice. 
So to degrade sacred subjects must have a terrible effect on those 
who make a trade of it. 

But, suppose all to be arranged in the highest style of art, 
would it promote the cause of piety of heart ? I think not. 
There are some really good crucifixions ,' they impress the be- 
holder, but they lose their force in time, and only blunt the feel- 
ings to the more ordinary impressions from meditation. As to 
the merit of these performances, I have on my side the judgment 
of all the enlightened Granadinos. There is a general desire 
among them to forbid by law all religious processions in the 
streets. But as to the theological question of the permission 
of such appeals to the senses, I should differ from them ; but I 
can not here discuss the question. 

I return now to Friday night and its bochinche. Nobody 
knew its origin. It was near the bridge, convent, and barracks 



556 NEW GEANADA. 

of San Francisco, but south of them all. It may well have 
been an insult offered in a dining-saloon to an officer by some 
hot-headed theorist schoolboy, or the reverse. The lower class 
sided rather with the military. Stones flew. Well-dressed 
gentlemen ran. I went to see what was the matter, but could 
see nothing. The governor, Pedro Gutierrez (Lee), was soon on 
the ground. He called for a file of soldiers to station across the 
street, just south of the bridge. I saw them mustered, and 
marched out from the barracks. 

The street was now full, and mostly of young artisans and 
loafers. I observed the conduct of the gobernador narrowly, 
and thought it highly judicious. He did not proceed harshly, 
but coaxingly, often jokingly. Thus he traversed the dense 
crowd from the bridge to the Cathedral. The armed police — 
guardia de policia — were out in the Plaza, but did not act. No 
arrests were made, and all was quiet. 

In the last chapter I stated that I thought we had had our 
last Granadan revolution. I must now say why I retained my 
opinion after what I saw on Holy Friday. In the first place, 
authority had triumphed in the last two revolutions. Second, 
the liberation of the Church removed one strong motive for rous- 
ing fanaticism to arms. So I counted for nothing all the talk 
I had heard from the beginning of March to the middle of April, 
because it was clear to me that any attempt made at this time 
would fail. 

I did not take into account, as I should, first, that there was 
little risk in failing. Almost all the eminent men in the nation 
had been rebels in 1841 or in 1851. By the very law, treason 
is not a capital crime, even when it ends in bloodshed. Sec- 
ond, I did not reflect that a civil war might therefore be en- 
kindled merely to gratify present revenge without hope of ulti- 
mate success. 

The government itself was desperate. It had yielded to Red 
Republican (Golgota) theories too far. These speculators had 
adopted the belief that universal suffrage and a free constitution 
were a remedy for all human evils. They had, as their expos- 
itor Samper says, "a blind faith in 'principles.'''' They had 
made their changes too rapidly, and were bent on trying all 
kinds of experiments ; and especially they had a fanatical ha- 



MURDER OF A SOLDIER. 557 

tred to a standing army. That of New Granada did, in fact, 
strike me rather as a nuisance, but it was small and diminish- 
ing, and all attempts at a militia had failed. 

General Melo, the commander of the cavalry in Bogota, seem- 
ed to have become particularly obnoxious to the Golgotas. They 
hated him. An ex-gobernador said to me one day, " Melo's 
troop rode furiously past me just now ; they had as lief ride 
over one as not. If I had had a pistol, I would have fired aft- 
er them." 

Melo was charged with murdering a corporal, named Ramon 
Quiros, in December, 1853. His dying statement, as he lay in 
the military hospital a day or two after his wound, was that he 
was stabbed in the street by a person unknown. Half Bogota 
believe that Quiros died with a lie in his mouth to save his mur- 
derer. They say that he went out of the barracks by night with 
his uniform covered with a ruana contrary to rule, and returned 
stupefied with drink. Melo reproved him ; he answered inso- 
lently, and Melo was fool enough to run him through ; and then 
he dies three days after, saying that Melo did not stab him. On 
the strength of such stories, the Conservador Gutierrez, who 
was elected gobernador, proceeded to take informations on the 
matter when he came into office on 1st January, 1854. Melo, 
if innocent, had injuries to resent ; and, whether guilty or not, 
punishment to fear. 

It was evident, too, that the adminstration was hedged in 
with enemies. They had the priesthood against them, for they 
had imprisoned and exiled bishops, and had ended by with- 
drawing all support from the Church. Nearly every goberna- 
dor elected in September was an enemy to government ; and in 
many cases I am compelled to believe that the priests interfered 
scandalously with the election. So the government, occupying 
a middle ground, had few and lukewarm supporters, and bold, 
active enemies. They had little to lose by a coup d'etat, but 
nothing to gain from it. 

Many thought differently from me in this matter. They were 
sure of a conspiracy about to burst. The Senate passed a res- 
olution requesting the executive to place arms in the hands of 
the gobernador for the protection of the city against the sol- 
diery. Obando assured them that their fears were groundless. 



558 NEW GEANADA. 

But so little satisfied were some that they even meditated a 
counter conspiracy to seize the barracks of San Francisco by a 
sudden attack with " white arms" — i. e, swords and poniards. 
This was thought too rash. 

I had been invited to a party on Sunday night, which, of course, 
I declined attending on account of the day. Many of the bit- 
terest enemies of the military in Congress were present there, and 
some also at another. A large number of the lower class, ene- 
mies to coats and gentility, and lovers of any thing new, had 
been put under arms before midnight, and the military proceed- 
ed thus to seize those who were obnoxious to them. Governor 
Gutierrez foresaw the evil in season to escape it. He had resign- 
ed on Saturday, and left Bogota. Colonel Emigdio Briceno, an 
excellent gentleman, took his place on Sunday night, and when 
he had been governor four hours he was a prisoner. The most 
extensive arrests were made, including all the males, attendants 
included, at the party to which I had been invited. The chief 
men sought for escaped. Few left Bogota, but all hid. Sam- 
per, who was a Congress-man, and his friend Murillo, ex-Sec- 
retary of the Treasury, and now Speaker of the House of Rep- 
resentatives, lived together. Samper and Mrs. M. were at a 
ball or party, and her husband somewhere else. Their house 
was attacked with a volley of musketry just before their re- 
turn, and they escaped. The house was treated rather roughly, 
but not pillaged except of eatables. 

By far the worst act of the whole night, however, was firing 
at a French goldsmith as he stood at a window in his balcony 
to see what was going on. Quite a number of balls struck the 
frame and sash of the window, and it was indeed a wonder that 
he was not killed. Melo himself apologized for the act next 
day. Horses as well as men were seized. All stables, not the 
property of foreigners, were visited, and the horses taken. 

I was awaked at daybreak by the sound of cannon, which 
were celebrating the entire success of the night's work. I rose 
and went to a servant, and asked what was the matter. She 
told me that it was a revolution. I then took my hat, and made 
my way to the Plaza. At the northwest corner I found a body 
of unwashed recruits drawn across the whole street. "You 
can go no farther, Senor," said one. "Yes he can, too," re~ 



BEGINNING OF THE EEVOLUTION. 559 

plied another; " we have no right to stop foreigners. Pass in, 
Senor." 

I declined passing in, but looked around the Plaza. A large 
body of men were drawn up there, most of them in ruanas. 
They appeared much pleased with their new occupation. So I 
went home and completed my toilet, and went to the vice-presi- 
dent's house. The door was not opened to my call, but a voice 
behind told me that Senor Obaldia had been summoned to the 
palace at daybreak, and had not returned. 

I went there and found a strong guard at the door. I asked 
permission of Major Jiron, who commanded, to enter, and was 
requested to wait a moment. At that instant an aid-de-camp 
brought him an order, to which he responded by ordering the 
aid into arrest. Each attempted to arrest the other, but the 
aid's orders prevailed. Jiron attempted to stab an officer who 
seized him, but instantly he had a horse-pistol at his breast, and 
more than one sword aimed at him. I sprang to get out of the 
range of the ball, and expected instantly to be covered with 
blood, but the Major surrendered and took his place in the ranks. 

Obaldia was looking out of the window over them, and I 
asked him to give directions for my admission, which he did. 
I entered, and learned that Melo had offered Obando the dicta- 
torship ; he had consulted with his cabinet, and refused. The 
message which that aid brought to Jiron was to hold the Pres- 
ident and cabinet prisoners. He refused, and now he was a 
prisoner without and I within. Great confusion prevailed in 
the palace. No one was seated ; no one long remained in the 
same room. 

I obtained my release without difficulty and with little de- 
lay. I went to the Senora de Obaldia, and conducted her to 
the boarding-place of Mr. Green, our minister. We went by a 
back street, but no one interrupted us. Others also had taken 
refuge there, and the house of every minister and consul had the 
flag flying, and persons and jewels found protection in them. 
It will be observed in all this that not a drop of blood was 
shed. 

I heard afterward that Major Jiron would have been " blown 
through" but for the presence of a foreigner, who it was feared 
might be endangered in the melee. With all due respect for the 



560 NEW GRANADA. 

Major, I consider his seizure, his resistance, and his danger as 
all a farce that I had the pleasure of witnessing. Why were 
not the cabinet secured at the same time with other important 
men ? What was the president doing all night ? At a later 
hour the secretaries were carried to secure prisons, the president 
detained a professed prisoner in his palace, and the vice-presi- 
dent set at liberty. He immediately took refuge under the 
stars and stripes. 

I could mention a theory that would explain every thing, 
even to the liberation of Obaldia, but it might be unjust. It is a 
little singular, but Herrera, the Designado, was also summoned 
to that meeting of the cabinet. Instead of complying with the 
message, he immediately took refuge at the American legation. 
Had he gone to the palace, Melo would have had every vestige 
of executive power — president, vice-president, Designado, and 
all the ministers in his power at once. Had he secured the 
Designado, it is not improbable that the vice-president would 
have been detained with the rest. 

Melo assumed the dictatorship before night, "having waited 
in vain for Obando to change his mind." I called on him to 
obtain liberty for some useless persons seized last night. He 
assured me that orders had already been given to set them at 
liberty. Coarse shirts and ruanas were in great request. Few 
coats were seen in the streets, and those were worn by foreign- 
ers. Sudden friendships were formed by old political antago- 
nists, now in common danger. 

Some sudden changes of opinion must have occurred. The 
Orejon, whose portrait graces page 127, came in town to-day, 
and affected to be quite pleased with the new order of things. 
He rode home shouting, Yiva la revolucion! When he got 
there, he found that every horse and mule capable of bearing 
saddle or enjalma had been carried off for the service of the glo- 
rious cause. 

I see, too, that my good landlady Margarita is rather preju- 
diced against cachacos, but has ordered the cajera to give mod- 
erate credit to any wearers of ruanas. I must not, however, 
charge her with a sudden conversion entirely. Her contempt 
for fops, who spend freely and pay slackly, has long since at- 
tracted my attention. One of these, who is courting a girl in 



THE NEW GOVEENMENT. 561 

a house opposite ours, had at one time so many drinks of brandi 
scored against him at our tienda that he ceased to patronize it. 
While chatting one evening with his lady, he was surprised at 
the entrance of our cajera, who " presented the respects of La 
Sefiora Margarita, and advised him to pay his brandy-hill, or 
wear his hat with a borboquejo, as otherwise the Sefiora would 
one day seize it off his head." He squared up that night. 

Melo has put forth an organic decree. All such notices arc 
made by bando ; that is, sending a civilian, a drum, and a squad 
of soldiers to various street-corners, where the civilian reads the 
proclamation or decree. Among other things, I perceive that 
Melo proclaims New Granada a Catholic nation again. It will 
not save him. 

The great business is recruiting. All persons are invited to 
enroll in the national guard, and those who neglect to do so are 
seized and incorporated into the standing army at once. Mar- 
ketmen come and go unmolested, for Bogota must eat. A line 
of sentinels, posted round the city, let in all who come, and let 
out those that have a pass from Obregon, Melo's second. Now 
and then a Congressman or other person who would not be per- 
mitted to leave runs off in the night through the fields. In 
this way they hope to get up a force to put down the Dictator. 
Herrera escaped on Wednesday night. 

Obregon addressed notes to the foreign representatives, who 
replied, generally, that it was their duty to maintain friendly re- 
lations with the government de facto, without taking part in 
domestic controversies. Obregon speaks English, so that our 
charge had no need of an interpreter. All the other embassa- 
dors but ours always speak Spanish. 

I could not find Samper after he hid till too late to call on 
him. No one, perhaps, besides him, was in so much danger as 
Murillo. I carried various notes between him and his wife; 
one of them dropped on the floor as I was talking with one of 
Melo's officers, who politely handed it to me without looking at 
it. All after that went couched in terms of a love intrigue. 

What was Obando's position all this while ? Professedly he 
was a prisoner. I do not think he was. He was not kept 
closely, as were the secretaries. I readily obtained admission 
to him, but to their prison with great difficulty. They could 

N N 



562 NEW GRANADA. 

hold no private interviews, and were not allowed to write. No 
soldier or guard intruded on Obando's privacy ; nay, the very 
window by which Bolivar escaped remained unguarded. 

There was a considerable quantity of money expected soon 
up the river, and it behooved the Dictator to extend his field of 
operations ; so he sent detachments to Mesa, to Facatativa, 
and to Guaduas. The troops guarding the Presidio at Mesa 
retired before superior numbers. The detachment to Guaduas, 
meeting no opposition, went on to Pescaderias, opposite Honda. 
The Gobernador of Mariquita, Mateo Viana, was at the Honda, 
trying to muster men enough to resist their crossing. The 
boats were detained on the west side while he was making the 
attempt. It failed, and he retired, leaving Melo's emissary to 
cross at leisure ; but the money came only to Mompos, and re- 
turned to wait for more quiet times. 

Melo must have means as well as men. There was not a 
large sum in the treasury when he seized on it. Forced con- 
tributions were resorted to, and sometimes with great cruelty. 
It was for this purpose, or some other, that an English citizen, 
Mr. Logan, was seized. One consequence of this, to our nation- 
al honor, must not be passed by. 

A guard conducting Mr. Logan was passing the American 
legation, then in charge of Mr. John A. Bennet, as Mr. Green 
had returned home. Mr. Logan sprang into Mr. Bennet's door. 
It was at once closed. Soon after, the legation was stormed 
while our flag was flying over it. The door was riddled with 
balls. Mr. Logan, wishing to save Mr. Bennet's life, went out 
and surrendered. 

Mr. Bennet demanded of Melo the punishment of the assail- 
ants. All his reward was, that he had to remain in constant 
peril of his life, and unable to escape from Bogota till Melo fell. 
He demanded again of the restored government that the crim- 
inals be tried and shot. Had this demand been enforced by a 
ileet off Cartagena till the miscreants had paid in their own per- 
sons the penalty, I conjecture that it would in the end save 
more lives of innocent American citizens than it would have cost 
of reckless outlaws, who, because armed with national muskets, 
feel freed from individual responsibility. In due time, another 
rewarded politician took the place of Mr. Green, and the affair 



AMERICAN FLAG INSULTED. 563 

was compromised by the government paying Mr. Bennet for 
the damage done his door, and offering him an apology for the 
insult of fanning him with bullets. 

But I must return to my history. The most reliable part of 
the country for the constitutional authority was the north. In 
Cipaquira was a detachment of the army schooled to Melo's 
purposes. There were also some conspirators in Tunja, but the 
dense, industrious population of these cold provinces were true 
to order. General Herrera escaped to Choconta, and com- 
menced the exercise of executive powers on the 21st of April, 
regarding Obando and Obaldia as prisoners in Bogota. He ap- 
pointed General Franco commander-in-chief. On the 19th of 
May, Franco rashly attacked Cipaquira, fought bravely, and 
died. General Buitrago led the forces, over 4000 in number, 
out to the northern end of the Sabana, beyond Cipaquira, where 
Melo fell upon them with 800 veterans, and annihilated them. 
The Designado was a fugitive on the plain, with victorious ene- 
mies in front and rear. He escaped through the wilds of the 
west to the Magdalena. 

Nor did things wear a better aspect at the south. No good 
could of course be expected of Antonio Mateus, gobernador of 
Cauca. He had 800 men, but found no opportunity of doing 
mischief with them. In Popayan the revolution was nine days 
earlier than at Bogota, but was promptly put down for the time. 
Again, from the 16th to the 21st of May, the friends of Melo 
had entire possession of Popayan, when they lost it after a se- 
vere battle. In Cali the battle lasted two days in the streets, 
and the conspirators capitulated. In Antioquia the movement 
was soon put down, but at the cost of the life of the Goberna- 
dor Pabon. 

Julio Arboleda, president of the Senate, took refuge at the 
Danish legation till he could escape from Bogota to Honda. 
This place he fortified, disinterring certain old cannon, which, 
had they been fired, would have been dangerous to some one. 
Threatened here by Melo's troops, he suddenly attacked 300 of 
them in Guaduas with less than 100, and routed them utterly at 
the point of the bayonet. There seems to me some analogy be- 
tween this transaction and the capture of the Hessians at Tren- 
ton. Each was the first dawn of ultimate success. 



564 NEW GRANADA. 

After this lie established himself at Guatequi, on the eastern 
bank of the Magdalena, about a day's journey below the mouth 
of the Coello. Here he collected men and boats, so as readily 
to descend the river, and defend any point more easily than Melo 
could attack* it. In virtue of this defense, Congress assembled 
at Ibague, and not at Ocaiia, as had been at first intended. Al- 
most their first act, 27th of September, was to suspend Oban do 
from the presidency. As Vice-president Obaldia had now es- 
caped from Bogota, the executive power had passed from the 
hands of Herrera the Designado to his. 

Before this, Arboleda had defeated detachments of Melo's 
troops at Anapoima and Anolaima, and on the 11th of Septem- 
ber the army of the executive occupied La Mesa. Here the 
forces gathered from the Valley of the Cauca, and the whole 
were under the command of ex-President Lopez. Some heavy 
pieces of artillery, brought by Arboleda, made part of their de- 
fenses. A serious discussion took place at Tena whether to 
spike them, or try to take them up to the Sabana. The Anti- 
oquenos were permitted to make the trial, and they succeeded. 

In the previous assaults on Bogota, it had been strongly de- 
fended at the crossing of the Bogota, which runs along a few 
miles west of it through marshy ground, a terrible moat to be 
passed in the face of the enemy. Here, doubtless, Melo had 
arranged for the decisive battle, like those of Santuario and 
Culebrera. 

In this he was not to be gratified ; the troops of Congress 
crossed the stream in the immediate vicinity of the Falls of 
Tequendama. The cannon seem to have crossed below the 
falls, and the heroic effort of the sons of Antioquia appears to 
have ended in placing them in the wagon-road from the coal- 
mines of Cincha, mentioned on page 274. 

Melo can not guard the immense circuit of the cornice of the 
plain. Expecting the enemy at Barro Blanco, or by the more 
northern ascent from Anolaima, the pass at the Hacienda of Te- 
quendama is in the hands of his enemies before he is aware. 
They are advancing past Soacha, and up the east side of the 
Bogota. The first point where there is any hope of resisting 
them is at the Biver Boza. He met them at the bridge of 
Boza, which we passed on page 273. 



MAECH UPON BOGOTA. 565 

Lopez was at Barro Blanco with 800 men when he saw the 
hopes of the nation crushed at Cipaquira and Tiquiza in May. 
Now, as he stood at Boza to deliver up the command of a nu- 
merous host to General Herran, all eyes were turned to the north 
with hope. Mosquera was coming. He had landed on the 
coast early in May for commercial purposes, but was at the ear- 
liest opportunity appointed to a command by the Designado. 
He had advanced through Ocaiia and the northern provinces to- 
ward Bogota, not without reverses, but increasing in strength 
as he advanced. My friend Jiron had been defeated at Pam- 
plona, and Melo had no troops north of Cipaquira. These, too, 
had to retire, and the sole chance for the Dictator was to defeat 
one of the two divisions before their union. 

Leaving the capital entirely unguarded, as Mosquera kept too 
far off with his smaller force, the Dictator marched with all his 
troops to meet Herran, now within five miles of Bogota. They 
fought on 22d November, 1854. Long and fierce was the com- 
bat between despairing veterans and superior numbers fighting 
in a better cause. The day was decided by that heavy artil- 
lery brought from Honda with so much labor as to have made 
the transport of it almost a piece of folly. 

So they advanced to Tres Esquinas, a spot where, in the 
southwest corner of our Plan of Bogota, three streams and four 
roads seem to radiate. A detachment of Melo's best troops 
here availed themselves of a bend in the road, deep ditches, and 
thick walls of tapias, to offer a vain resistance to the cautious 
advance of Herran the next day. Castro led them, but here 
again they met the fatal artillery, were defeated, and many of 
them taken prisoners. 

Shall Bogota be attacked instantly ? The military men ad- 
vised the measure ; Obaldia and the ministers feared to risk too 
much on it. Mosquera would soon advance, and, let Melo in- 
trench himself as he would, the result was certain. A repulse 
of either division might drive both armies from the Plain before 
their junction. 

Unhappy Bogota ! There may be found nuns now living who, 
from their belfries, have seen the fate of the capital decided by 
fire, and thunder, and blood, four times before. It was stormed 
in December, 1812, by Baraya, who was repulsed ; stormed and 



566 NEW GRANADA. 

carried by Bolivar in December, 1814 ; lost at the battle of San- 
tuario, 27th August, 1830, and saved by that of Culebrera, 28th 
October, 1840 ; but never since the city was founded has it 
seen, and never may it see, a scene like that of 3d and 4th De- 
cember, 1854! 

On the 2d of December Mosquera was at Chapinero, just be- 
yond the northern limits of our Plan of Bogota. The next day, 
at noon, the troops of the Dictator were vainly contending with 
the vanguard of Herran at the suburb of Las Cruces, in the op- 
posite extremity of the city. Step by step the besieged retired, 
till at midnight they were making their stand at San Agustin 
and San Bartolome. For fifteen long hours they lose now a 
foot and now a yard, now a gun and now a tower, and the re- 
sistless foe was descending upon them from above the palace. 

Nor is Mosquera idle. He has carried San Diego ; he is 
pressing up to Las Nieves, while Melo's head-quarters are at 
the barracks of San Francisco. Eastward the mountain hedges 
him in ; to the west the Sabana is in the possession of the forces 
of the Vice-president. Shut in thus, the Plaza of San Francisco 
is filled with his troops, crowding in over the bridge from the 
south, while at length Mosquera has carried La Tercera. 

But as the last moment approached, and the end had become 
inevitable, the country lost a man whose life was worth as much 
as the death of ten like Melo. The Designado Herrera, when 
Obaldia assumed the executive functions, became a mere gener- 
al, inferior in rank to Mosquera, whom his own decree had raised 
to the command, and under whose commands he now fought. 
He who had been the unsuccessful candidate at Obando's elec- 
tion, and who nevertheless had been placed second after him — 
who had been true to the executive in all revolutions, and had 
fought against Herran and Mosquera, Lopez and Obando, now 
shed his blood for the cause of constitutional authority in the 
streets of Bogota. 

But now a dreadful sound is in the Dictator's ears. It is a 
loud peal from the Cathedral bells, announcing that the Plaza 
is lost and gained ; nay, in the Calle Real a cannon is so plant- 
ed as to bear upon the Barracks of San Francisco. The revo- 
lution is at its last gasp at the very spot where I had seen its 
birth in the bochinche of Good Friday. Now his troops are 



THE NEXT ADMINISTRATION. 567 

crying that this must have an end. Desperate and almost be- 
side himself, he sends an officer to Mosquera offering to surren- 
der if only his life is spared. Mosquera gives his word — inju- 
diciously, perhaps, but it never will be broken. The war is at 
an end. 

Ere the diligent reader shall have reached this paragraph, he 
may have heard of the election of a new president of New 
Granada. It will be one of three persons before mentioned. 
If it be T. C. Mosquera, a scene of bright hopes of future pros- 
perity opens on us. If Mariano Ospina, our only fear will be 
priestly domination. But if Manuel Morillo succeed, as he 
probably must, then the land must be prepared to bear all that 
a zealous, truly patriotic, but rash and ill judged experimenter 
can inflict. But a happier future awaits her ; soon let it come ! 



APPENDIX. 



I. GLOSSARY. 

Spanish words, in their Peninsular acceptation, have been systematically ex- 
cluded from the preceding pages. The words occurring there and below are of 
Indian origin, or else, being Spanish, are used in a duTerent sense from that given 
in dictionaries, or applied to objects unknown in the temperate zone. 

The pronunciation of the Spanish language is the easiest possible. It is read- 
ily learned, and none should shrink from it who have any occasion to use it. 

Accent. — Two general rules include all words in which the accent is not in- 
variably written over the word : 1. Words ending in a vowel or diphthong have 
the accent on the penult, as Orinoco. 2. Words ending in any other consonant 
than s added to form the plural, are accented on the last, as Madrid. All such 
words are written below with the grave accent, to indicate that the accent is not 
usually to be written. All exceptions to these rules are written here and every 
where with the acute accent, as in Bolivar, Panama. 

Consonants have the same power as in English, except 

C before e and i has the sound of s lisped, or th in thin ; 

Z has this same sound always ; neither ever sounds like s. 

Ch (reckoned by the Spanish as one letter) has always the same sound as in 
child. 

D at the end of words (and by some in the middle) is pronounced like th in 
them. 

G before e and i has the sound of h in hat. 

J always has the power of h in hat. 

X never occurs in modern orthography except as les ; it had the power of h 
in hat. 

H is always silent. 

LI (one letter) sounds like Hi in million, which they would write milhn. 

N like ni in banio, which they write bano. 

Qu before e and i like k, but 

Qu before a and o, and qu before e and i, as in English. 

Rr (one letter), a very strong r — an absolute rattle of the tongue. 

W does not occur, and k rarely is found. 

Vowels have but one invariable sound each : 

A like a in father . 

E like e in they. 

O like o in no. 

U like oo in pool. 

Diphthongs are so accounted only in rules of accent and versification : 

Au sounds like ou in. found. 

Ai like i in pine. 

Numbers below indicate pages in the body of the work ; if preceded hyf, they 
refer to the illustrations. 



570 



APPENDIX. 



Acequia, aqueduct, 115. 

Achicoria, a flower, 125. 

Achiote, arriatto, 141. 

Achipulla, a plant, 280. 

Aehira, a leaf, 148. 

Acuapar, sandbox-tree, 47. 

Adobe, uriburnt bricks, 181. 

Aduana, custom-house, 29. 

Advocation, a personality of the Virgin, 1S6. 

Aguaeate, a fruit, 410. 

Ahijada, goddaughter, 181. 

Ahijado, godson, 181. 

Ajiaco, a sieiu, 120. 

Alameda, a loatt bordered with poplars, 164. 

Albarca, a sandal, 35, /. 292. 

Alcabala, taa; on sales, 258. 

Alcaide, jailer, 38. 

Alcalde, a district officer, 37. 

Alcaldia, aw o$ce, 37. 

Aldea, an imperfect district, 37. 

Alfandoque, a rattle, 124, /. 441. 

Alfandoque, a candy, 124. 

Alferez (ensign), patron, 546. 

Alma bendita, a ghost, 340. 

Almendron, palm-almond, 400. 

Almibar, sirup, 122. 

Alniofrez, a ftagr, 2S9, /. 288. 

Almohadillado, mule-ladders, 845. 

Almojavana, a cake, 473. 

igEjfi;} a «d* «*,/.«». 

Altozano, a platform, 150. 

Alverja, pea, 148. 

Anda, a stage, 545. 

Angelito (fc'ttZe angel), dead child, 446. 

Anis, a plant and seed, 56. 

Anisado, a drink, 56. 

Anon, a fruit, 502. 

Apellido, surname, 106. 

Ara, altar-stone, 187. 

Arandela (flounce), ruff, 145. 

Arepa, corn-cake, 372. 

Arracacba, an esculent root, 150. 

Arretranca, breeching, 133, /. 132. 

Arriero (muleteer), an ant, 64. 

Arroba, a quarter, 487. 

Arroz, rice, 500. 

Arrozal, rice-field, 500. 

Atajada, family of a horse, 430. 

Atascadero, mud-hole, 345. 

Atillo, a 7w'de case, 45. 

Atraso, backwardness, 379. 

Avispa, wasp, hornet, 90. 

Avispero, ?iest o/ wasp or hornet, 90. 

Azucar, loaf sugar, 122. 

Azucena (Z%), a?i orchid, 416. 

Badea, a fruit, 130. 

Balija, mail-trunk, 259. 

Bambuco, a dance, 440, /. 441. 

Banco, a bench, 425. 

Banda, tond oji a ro'uer, 19. 

Bando, proclamation, 561. 

Bandola, small guitar, 124, /. 441. 

Banquillo, seat to be sfart on, 164. 

Baquiano, a?i expert, 49. 

Barbuquejo, hat-string, 138, /. 132. 

Barra, audience, 257. 

Barrigdn, a deformed person, 76. 

Barrio, ifard, 154. 

Batata, sweet potato, 471. 

Bayeton, a flannel garment, 32. 

Beata, a devotee, 193. 

Beaterio, a religious house, 516. 

Bejueo, a climber, 417. 

Bestia, animal for traveling, 45. 

Bija, arnatto, 141. 

Bocbica, a fabulous personage, 126. 

Bocbincbe, riot, 553. 

Bodega, 7ioM ; store-house, 55, 92. 

Bodeguero, store-keeper, 92. 



Boga, boatman, 39. 
Bollo, a cafce, 108. 
Bolsa, purse, 101. 
Bolsillo, pocket, 101. 
Bongo, a boat, 39. 
Boqueron, gorge, 218. 
Borrachero, a plant, 131. 
Boveda, vault; tomb, 60. 
Buitre, a bird, 495. 
Bunde, a dance, 479. 

Cabecera, capital of canton, 37. 

Cabeza (head), seat of district government, 37. 

Cabildo, district Legislature, 37. 

Cabiiya, a plant; its fibre, 246. 

Cacao, chocolate-tree, 88. 

Caehaco, stylish fellow, 146. 

Cachimona, a game, 377. 

Caiman, a reptile, 71. 

Cajera, saleswoman, 149. 

Calabaza (fruit), calabazo (dis/i), calabash, 74. 

Calentano, lowlander, 246. 

Calle, Moc& o/a street; the street, 154. 

Callejon, deep road, 214. 

Camara provincial, provincial Legislature, 37. 

Camarin, image closet, 187. 

Camisa, under garment, 136, /. 136. 

Camison, gown; coarse robe, 59, /. 59. 

Canalete, a paddle, 39, /. 70. 

Canape, a seat, 425. 

Candela, a coa£, 170. 

Candlo (cinnamon-tree), Winter's bark, 238. 

Canoa, trough, 89. 

Canonigo, prebendary, 194. 

Canton, a canton, 37. 

Cana brava, a grass, 71. 

Cafia diilce, sugar-cane, 118. 

Canaveral, cane-field, 118. 

Capellan, holder of a capellania, 419. 

Capellania, perpetual claim on land, 419. . 

Capilla, chapel, 159. 

Capirote, a masfc, 545. 

Capitan, a fish, 136. 

Caracoli, cashew-tree, 61. 

Carate, a disease, 151. 

Carga, mule load, 220.4737 Zbs. avoird., 45. 

Carguero, carrier of burdens, 93. 

Came de menudo, viscera, 177. 

Carrera, street, 154. 

Carriel, a pouch, 101, 536. 

Cartilla, primer, 472. 

Casa (house), a group, 188. 

Casa alta, two-story house, 62. 

Casa baja, one-story house, 63. 

Casa claustrada, Tiowse wit/i court, 62, /. 139. 

Cazabe, a fond o/ bread, 62. 

Cedro, a tree, 3S9. 

Cedron, a tree, 457. 

Ceiba, a tree, 506. 

Censo, an annuity, 419. 

Centimo, a cent, 119. 

Cerda, hair rope, 45S. 

Cerezo, cherry-tree, 201. 

Cbambimbe, soap-berry, 469. 

Champan, a boat, 81, /. 80. 

Cbapeton, native of Spain, 168. 

Chaqueta, a garment, 193. 

Charco, a deep spot, 398. 

Chasqui, a messenger, 255. 

Chicha, a drink, 144. 

Chincbe, bed-bug, 49. 

Chircate, a garment, 136, /. 136. 

Chirimoya, a fruit, 502. 

Chi-to-o! stop! 129. 

Chulo, a bird, 280. 

Chusque, a grass, 217. 

Cigarrillo, paper cigar, 171. 

Cilicio, an article for self-torture, 189. 

Cincha, cjM-tft o/ saddle, 424. 

Cipres, a tree, 3S9. 

Cirial, candle-pole, 114. 



APPENDIX. 



571 



Citoldgia, a reading-book, 472. 

Cocer, to cook, 106. 

Cocli, a bird, 525. 

Coco, cocoanut, 72. 

Cocui and cocuyo, a luminous bug, 110. 

Cofradia, a fraternity, 189. 

Cohete, a rocket, 450, 113. 

Cojin, stool, 425. 

Cojini'tes, saddle-pockets, 424. 

Comadre, a relation, 181. 

Compadre, a relation, 181. 

Companeros, mates, 45. 

Concertado, a hired man, 434. 

Condor, a bird, 495. 

Condor, a coin, 119. 

Congreso, Congress, 37. 

ContadSro, resting (counting) place, 290. 

Contraguasca, a second rope, 432. 

Contramaestre, mate o/ a steam-boat, 55. 

Coraza (cuirass), part of a saddle, 424. 

Coro, c/ioir (in a cathedral), 194. 

Corona, a set of prayers, 183. 

Corozo, a palm, 474. 

Corpus, a festival, 544. 

Corral, yard, 428. 

Corredor, #«r£ of a house, 62. 

Correista, mail-carrier, 259. 

Coser, to sew, 106. 

Coto, goitre, 116, /. 820. 

Cotudo, man toith goitre, 116. 

Credo, the Creed, 398. 

Creciente, waxing of the moon, 474. 

Criollo, Creole, 168. 

Cuaresma, Lent, 544. 

Cuartel, barracks, 198. 

Cuartillo, a com, 119. 

Cuarto, sixteenth of a dime, 119. 

Cucurucho, a cap, 546. 

Cuentas, beads, 183, /. 193. 

Cuja, bunk, 200. 

Cura (masc), pastor, 410. 

Cura (/cm.), a fruit, 410. 

Curi, a mammal, 44IT. 

Curiiba, a fruit, 122. 

Custddia, a wafer-box, 187. 

Demanda, ronY, 409. 
Derrumbe, land-slide, 344. 
Destroncado, wsed Mp, 52. 
Disciplina (whip), a plant, 439. 

^Pf. 1 * ' • .-, £ district, 37. 
Distnto parroquial, J ' 

Dominico, a fruit, S8. 

Dulce, sweetmeats, 73. 

Duro, dollar, 119. 

Echar agua, toy baptism, 180. 

Embarazada, pregna,nt, 477. 

Enaguas, a garment, 145. 

Encauchado, a garment, 32. 

Encerado, water-proof cloth, 44. 

Encomienda, property sent by mail, 260. 

Enjalma, pack-saddle, 45. 

Equipaje, baggage, 241. 

Equis (tetter a;), a venomous snake, 498. 

Ermita, "hermitage," 214. 

Escaiio, a bench, 425. 

Escoba (69-oom), a weed, 474. 

Espadas (swords), spades of cards, 124. 

Estancia, _/?eZd, 422. 

Estera, matting, 40. 

Estola, a 6am(i, 478. 

Estribo de aro, common stirrup, 133. 

Estribo orejon, shoe-shaped stirrup, 133, /. 132. 

Fiesta de toros, bull-feast, 296, /. 29S. 

Fique, a plant; its fibre, 246. 

Fonda, eating-house, 97. 

Frailejon, a plant, 216. 

Frijol and frisol, 6ean, 150. 

Fuerte, doZtar, 119. 

Funda, hat-cover, 133, /. 132. 



Funda, caldron, 350. 
Fuste, saddle-tree, 4SA. 

Gacha, a jar, 144. 
Galapago (terrapin), a saddle, 425. 
Gallinazo, a vulture, 230. 
Gancho, ftoofc, 39. 
Garbanzo, chick-pea, 143. 
Garrapata, £ic&, 481. 
Garrapatero, a bird, 525. 
Garrote, strangling apparatus, 164. 
Garza, a bird, 136. 
Gobernacion, an q^tee, 87. 
Gobernador, an officer, 37. 
Gobierno, national government, 37. 
Gorra (cap), bonnet, 112. 
Granadilla, a fruit, 130. 
Granadilla de papel, a fruit, 130. 
Grupera, crupper, 425. 
Guaca, a grave, 538. 
Guacamaya, macaw, 127. 
Guacharo, a Mrd, 264, 312. 
Guaco, some plants, 457. 
Guadua, a jrrass, 109. 
Guadual, thicket of guadua,, 110. 
Guambia, a &aa, S8, 101. 
Guanabana, a fruit, 502. 
Guaquero, treasure-hunter, 589. 
Guarapo, a drink, 107. 
Guaricha, a tew girl, 174. 
Guarruz, a drinfc, 353. 
Guarumo, a tree, S7. 
Guasca, hide rope, 425. 
Guatin, a mammal, 447. 
Guayaba, guava, 72. 
Guayabal, p-warn thicket, 72. 
Guayabo, guava-tree, 72. 
Guayacan, a fewsft, 289. 
Guazimo, a tree, 439. 
Guindo, banana, 88. 
Guisado, a cfts/i o/ meat, 473. 

Haba, Windsor bean, 150. 
Hada, a supernatural being, 840. 
Harton, a plantain, 87. 
Hisopo, a sprinkler, 192. 
Hdrca, a fork; gibbet, 429. 
Hospicio, almshouse, 162. 
Hostia, a wafer, 113. 
Hoyo, hydrographic basin, 235. 
Huevos tibios, 6oited egr^s, 149. 
Hule, oil-cloth, 288. 

Icaco and hicaco, a fruit, 73. 
Inocente, April-fool, 304. 
Iraca, a plant, 36, 400. 

Jaquima, halter, 183, /. 132. 

Jefe politico, an officer, 37. 

Jefetura, an oj/tee, 37. 

Jipijapa, a plant, 63. 

Jipatera, a disease, 76. 

Judia, 6ean, 150. 

Juez letrado, prof essional judge, 406. 

Jura do s, jwrj/, 407. 

Lazo, rope ; noose, 45, 425, /. 426. 

Legua, a measure, 47, 594. 

Lengua de Vaca (cow's tongue), aplant, 68. 

Lenteja, lentil, 150. 

Limon dulce, a fruit, 74. 

Llano (plain), cleared land, 436. 

Llave, slip-knot, 426. 

Loteria, a game, 306. 

Machete, a foiife, 17, /. 70. 
Macho (male), mule, 45. 
Madrina, god-mother, 181. 
Madrono, a fruit, 804. 
Mague, aplant; its pith, 246. 
Mampara, a screen, 174. 
Manati, a mammal, 46. 



572 



APPENDIX. 



Mingle, mangrove-tree, 82. 

Mango, a fruit, 304. 

Manos muertas, mortmain, 419. 

Manta, native cloth, 519. 

Manteca (butter), lard, 56. 

Mantellina, a garment, 136, /. 186. 

Manteo, priest's cloak, 192. 

Mantequilla, butter, 56. 

Manzanillo, manchineel-tree, 32. 

Manzanillo, a Euphorbiate bush, 310. 

Masamorra, a kind of food, 8T1. 

Matador, bull-fighter, 265. 

Matraca, a rattle, 551. 

Maure, a sash, 187. 

Mayorazgo, entailment, 419. 

Mayorddmo, steward, 418. 

Mazorca, /mm'S of maize or chocolate, S 

Medio, a coin, 119. 

Melado, sirup or molasses, 122. 

Menguante, waning of the moon, 4T4. 

Mestizo, mixed race, 69, /. 70. 

Miel, thin sirup, 122. 

Miel de abejas, honey, 122. 

Miel de purga, molasses, 122. 

Minorista, a priest-boy, 194. 

Mistela, cordial, 440. 

Mitad, eighth of a dime, 119. 

Mochila, a Dag, 101. 

Mondongo, a kind of meat, 177. 

Montana, forest country, 436. 

Mdnte, thicket, 436. 

Montura, saddle, bridle, &c, 425. 

Monumento, deposit of a wafer, 550. 

Mdro, fustic, 53. 

Moya, a cafce o/ salt, 98. 

Mucura, an earthen vessel, 115. 

Mula (a female mule), mule, 45. 

Murcielago, 6at, 140. 

Nacuma, a plant, 63. 
Naranjada, a drink, 121. 
Nazareno, a bearer, 545. 
Neme, bitumen, 842. 
Nigua, aw insect, 330. 
Nispero, a fruit, 390. 
Ndmbre, Christian name, 106. 
Name, j/a??t, 151. 

Obispo (bishop), part of a still, 448. 
Oca, aw esculent "-root," 150. 
Olla, aw earthen pot, 143. 
Olleta, chocolate-pot, 143. 
Onza (owwce), a coiw, 119. 
O-o-is-te ! stop / 129. 
Oracion (prayer), dusk, 183. 
Orejdn, a class of men, 132,/. 132. 
Ornamento, altar-dress, 112. , 

Padrina, godmother, 181. 
Padrinazgo, a relationship, 181. 
Padrino, godfather, 181. 
Padrote, stud-horse, 430. 
Paica, worm-seed, 445. 
Paila, caldron, 466. 
Paja (straw), thatch, 36. 
Pala, push-hoe, 487. 
Palanoa, setting-pole, 39. 
Palito, a measure, 487. 
Palmiche, cabbage-palm, 149. 
Palo bobo, tree-fern, 129, /. 281. 
Pandereta, tamborine, 440, /. 441. 
Panela, coarse sugar, 122. 
Patio de manos, toweZ, 56. 
Pafiolon, a shawl, 145. 
Papaya, papaw, 81. 
Paramentos, priests' robes, 112. 
Paramo, /wgft Za?id, 70. 
Parroquia, parish, 37. 
Pasaje, ferriage, 94. 
Pasero, ferryman, 94. 
Paso, ferry, 94. 
Paso, part o/ a procession, 545. 



Pastilla, a pie, 150. 

Patacon, sJice of plantain; a coin, 119. 

Patena, a plate, 113. 

Patibulo, execution place, 164. 

Patio, cowrt, 82. 

Patron, c/iie/ &oga, 39. 

Patrona, mistress, 78. 

Pauji, a bird, 127. 

Pava, a Oird, 495. 

Peaje, transit duty, 50. 

Pega-pega, a flower, 203. 

Pellon, a rw^, 188. 

Peon, hired man, 45. 

Pepino, cucumber and another fruit, 149. 

Perica, drunkenness, 453. 

Perico lijero, tfte sJotft, 388. 

Perrerista, whipper, 527. 

Perrero, whip, mi, f. 2SS. 

Persignarse, to cross one's self, 1S4. 

Personero, prosecuting attorney, 407. 

Pesebre, manger, 467. 

Peso, ei'oTit or ten dimes, 119. 

Peso fuerte, dollar, 119. 

Petaca, a 6oa;, 45. 

Petacon, a bed-bug, 49. 

Pila, /o?it, - fountain, 115. 

Pinuela, a fruit, 103. 

Pita, a^fcre, 247. 

Pitahaya, a fruit, 525. 

Plata suelta, change, 106. 

Platanal and platanar, pJawtam,/jeZd, 87. 

Platano, plantain, 87. 

Plaza, public square, 35. 

Poltrona, easy-chair, 425. 

Pomarosa, a fruit, 804. 

Poncho, a garment, 32. 

Pontazgo, bridge-toll, 50. 

Popa, stem, 78. 

Porton, /ro?it door, 62, /. 156. 

Posada, stopping-place, 48. 

Potrero, pasture, 468. 

Poyo, a bench, 49. 

Presidente, president, 37. 

Pre til, balustrade, 62. 

Proa, prow, 82. 

Proceso, law-suit, 406. 

Provmcia, province, 37. 

Puchero, a boiled dish, 149. 

Puerta, .gate ; door ; oars, 92. 

Puerta de golpe, gate, 92. 

Puerta de misericordia, a side door, .156. 

Puerta de trancas, bars, 92. 

Quereme, afloioer, 517. 
Quingo, zigzag, 18. 

Eacimo, bunch of fruit, 87. 
Baya, a fish, 341. 
Eancho, shed, camp, 246. 
Bascadera, aw esculent, 538. 
Baspon, coarse (hat), 69. 
Real, dime, 119. 
Reinosos, uplanders, 246. 
Reja, window bars, 30. 
Rejo, thong, 45. 
Eelleno, a sausage, 120. 
Eesbaladero, a sKde, 435. 
Eesgu&rdo, reserve, 243. 
Eodeo, herding, 423. 
Eogacion, special festival, 444. 
Eosario, a set of prayers, 1S3. 
Euana, a garment, 32, /. 426. 
Eubrica, part o/ signature, 326, /. 326. 

Sacar, to engage to dance, 443. 
Sacramento del altar, a salutation, 291. 
Sacristan, sexton, 215. 
Sacristia, vestry, 112. 
Sagrario, a KttZe cupboard, 187. 
Sagij, arrow-root, 146. 
Sala, maiw room, 48. 
Salamanqueja, a lizard, 35. 



APPENDIX. 



573 



Salchlcha, a sausage, 120. 
Salvaje, a plant, 53. 
Salve, Hail Mary, 183. 
Sancdcho, a stew, 373. 
Santiguarse, to cross one's self, 184. 
Saya, a skirt, 184. 
Sllla, arm-chair ; a saddle, 425. 
Sillero, bearer, 93, 365, /. 364. 
Silldn, saddle-chair, 241, /. 240. 
Sobre-carga, a middle package, 51. 
Sofa, sofa, 425. 
Sdpa, soup, 141. 
Sotaeuello, a cravat, 65. 
Sotana, priests' dress, 193. 
Sudadero, saddle-blanket, 425. 
Suelta, small money, 106. 
Suspiro (sigh), a cake, 472. 

Tabla, a cake, 89. 

Taburete, chair, 425. 

Talega, money-bag, 101. 

Tamal, aw article of food, 143. 

Tambo, a sfted /or travelers, 365. 

Tapa, covering, 69,/. 70. 

Tapias, rammed earth, 131. 

Tarjado, incapacitated horse, 431. 

Tarro, a vmeJ, 109, /. 386. 

Tasajo, jerked beef, 56. 

Teja, <i7e, 67. 

Templar, to change climate, 241. 

Tercdra, a society, 188. 

Tercio, half carga, 45. 

Tienda, shop, 48. 

Tierra caliente, lotvlands, 78. 

Tierra fria, uplands, 73. 

Tierra templada, middle lands, 73. 

Tierras baldias, public domain, l(j?. 

Tijereto, a &2'rd, 524. 



Tinaja, a jar, 75. 
Tinajera, water-place, 115. 
Tinajon, Zargre tinaja, 143. 
Tinieblas, a ceremony, 550. 
Tiple, a musical instrument, 124. 
Tiza (chalk), infusorial earth, 388. 
Toalla, toweZ, 56. 
Tocayo, namesake, 106. 
Toldo (teraO, a roo/, 81. 
Tdma ! a call to animals, 433. 
Torbellino (whirhoind) , a dance, 448. 
Toreador, bull-fighter, 299. 
Tortilla, omelette, 149. 
Totunia, a fruit; a vessel, 74. 
Trancas, 6ars, 92. 
Trenza, braid, 69. 
Tribuna, speaking desk, 257. 
Trisagio, a religious service, 518. 
Tulpas, tfrree stones, 56. 
Tuna, a fruit, 301. 

Una-gato (cai-ctazo), a 6ms7j, 418. 
Uva cimarrona, a berry, 216. 

Vaca (cow), a huge bag, 289, /. 288. 

Venta, inn, 119. '" 

Verdolaga, purselane, 446. 

Vice-parroquia, sub-parish, 37. 

Vigilancia, surveillance, 348. 

Visperas (vespers), eve, 183. 

Vueltas de la Vireina, turning places, 137. 

Yuca, aw escwJenJ roof, 62. 

Zaguan, entry, 62. 

Zamarros, a garment, 133, /. 132. 

Zancudo (long legs), musquito, 72. 

Zapote, a fruit, 390. 

Zaragoza, a flower, 535. 



H. OBSEEVATIONS ON THE MAPS. 

The inconvenience of consulting maps folded in the book, and their liability to 
mutilation, have induced the author to limit the size of the maps. Still, no im- 
portant town has been omitted from them — no post-town nor seat of cantonal 
government. The appropriate position of every district in the nation is shown 
by means of the geographical index in Appendix III., which indicates the can- 
ton of each, while the cabecera of every canton is found on the map with the same 
number attached. 

Small as are the maps, unusual care has been spent on them, and yet they 
must be far from accurate. No good map of New Granada exists, to the knowl- 
edge of the author. The best used in this compilation is H. S. Tanner's map of 
Colombia, published in New York in 1828. Brue's Colombia (Paris, 1826), Acos- 
ta's New Granada (Paris, 1847), and Mosquera's New Granada (New York, 1852), 
have been consulted. A rude sketch of mail-routes, prepared by Colonel Agustin 
Codazzi in 1853, has been used as far as possible. 

The coasts and coast towns have been copied from admiralty charts, kindly 
furnished by the Messrs. Blunt, who have shown a lively interest in promoting 
the accuracy of the work. Twenty-four towns in the provinces north of Bogota 
and ten in that of Antioquia are fixed from observations of the Comision Coro- 
grafica, and, from the character of Colonel Codazzi, may be relied upon as unu- 
sually accurate. They are reduced on the assumption that Bogota is 74° 14' 15" 
west of Greenwich. Sixteen others are located according to less reliable observa- 
tions. The remaining towns are from Codazzi's sketch, except Cienega-de-oro, 
which is a sheer guess. 

The rivers and mountains are still less accurate, as no maps have the hydro- 



574 



APPENDIX. 



graphic basins correctly shown. Besides a careful discussion of conflicting maps, 
the author has availed himself of his own observations and some rude copies of 
manuscript maps made in New Granada. In this severe task the compiler has 
received efficient aid from Mr. J. "Wells, who drew the maps, and Mr. Charles 
Copley, who engraved them ; yet none of the errors that shall be discovered can 
be attributed to either : they must be charged to the imperfection of the mate- 
rials at present in reach. 

The boundaries of the provinces can be but imperfectly ascertained, nor is it 
important, so constantly are they changing. All my applications to representa- 
tives of the Granadan government have been fruitless, and all the numerous and 
important changes made since 1853 have been put down from verbal statements 
of various gentlemen who happened to recollect most of them. 



m. GEOGEAPHICAL INDEX. 

New Granada has consisted of the following provinces, territories, and states, 
and the cantones mentioned under them were extant as territorial subdivisions. 
The cabecera of each bears generally the name of the canton, and in all other 
cases it is mentioned. In all cases the first canton contains the capital of the 
province. Abbreviations are affixed to the provinces, and numbers to the can- 
tones, for convenience of reference. In the maps the names of the provinces are 
in Capitals, the seat of provincial government in Eoman, and the other towns 
in Italic. The number of each canton is attached to its cabecera. 







8. 


San Andres. 


4. Espinal, cab. Giiamo. 


Antioqxjia. 


(An.) 


9. 


Sincelejo. 


5. Honda. 


1. Medellin. 

2. Amaga. 




Casenaee. (Cs.) Cap. Moreno. 


Moooa Terr. (Mc.) 


•3. Antioquia. 




1. 


Pore, cab. Moreno. 


Mompos. (Mp.) 


4. Marinilla. 




2. 


Arauca. 


1. Mompos. 


5. Nordeste, cab. 


Amalfi. 


3. 


Chire. [grande. 


2. Magangu6. 


6. Rio Negro. 




4. 


Nunchia, cab. Labranza- 


3. Majagual. 


7. Salamina, cab. 


Sonson. 


5. 


Taguana, cab. Zapotosa. 


4. Simti. 


8. Santa Eosa. 










9. Sopetran. 




Catjca. (Cc.) Cap. Buga. 


Netva. (Nv.) 






1. 


Buga. 


1. Neiva. 


Bogota. 


(B.) 


2. 


Anserma, cab. Ans. Nueva. 


2. Occidente, cab. Yaguara. 


1. Bogota. 




3. 


Cartago. 


3. Plata. 


2. Caqueza. 




4. 


Palmira. 


4. Purificacion. 


3. Cipaquira. 




5. 


Supia. 


5. Timana, cab. Garson. 


4. Choconta. 




6. 


Toro. 




5. Facatativa. 




7. 


Tulua. 


OoaSa. (Oc.) 


6. Funza. 

7. Fusagasuga. 




Choco. (Ch.) Cap. Quibd6. 


1. Ocana. 


8. Guaduas. 




1. 


Atrato, cab. Quibdo. 


Pamplona. (Pm.) 


9. Guatavita. 




2. 


San Juan, cab. Novita. 


1. Pamplona. 


10. Mesa. 








2. Bucaramanga. 


11. San Martin, cab. Medina. 




Istmo. (I.)* 


3. Concepcion. 


12. Tocaima. 




1. 


Panama. 


4. Fortoul, cab. San Andres. 


13. Ubate. 




2. 


Alanje, cab. David. 


5. Jiron. 


14. Palma. 




3. 


Bocas del Toro. 


6. Malaga. 






4. 


Chagres. 


7. Piedecuesta. 


BUENAVENTTJBA. 


(B.) Cap. 


5. 


Chorrera. 


8. Eosario. 


Cali. 




6. 


Darien, cab. Yavisa. 


9. Salazar. 


1. Cali. 




7. 


Nata. 


10. San Jose. 


2. Eaposo, cab. Buenaventura. 


8. 


Parita. 


Pasto. (Ps.) 


3. Eoldanillo. 




9. 


Portobello. 






10. 


Santiago. 


1. Pasto. 


Caetagena 


(Ct.) 


11. 


Santos. 


2. Barbacoas. 


1. Cartagena. 




12. 


Soto, cab. Penonom6. 


3. Ipiales. 


2. Carmen. 




13. 


Taboga. 


4. Tumaco. 


3. Cienega-de-oro. 

4. Corozal. 


Mabiquita. (Mq.) Cap.lbagnk 


5. Tuquerres. 


5. China. 




1. 


Ibague. 


Popatan. (Pp.) 


6. Lorica. 




2 


Ambalema. [rral. 


1. Popayan. 


7. Mahates. 




3 


Castrolarma, cab. Chapa- 


2. Caldas, cab. Alniaguer. 



* The legal name is Estado de Panama. 



APPENDIX. 



575 



3. Izcuande. 


3. Plato. 


4. 


Soata. 


4. Micai, cab. Guapi. 


4. Remolino. 


5. 


Sogamoso. 


5. Santander, cab. Quilichao. 


5. Tenerife, cab. San Anto- 






• 


nio. 




Tunja. (Tj.) 


ElOHAOHA. (Rh.) 

1. Riohacha. 


Socoeeo. (Sc.) 


1. 

2. 


Tunja. 
Garagoa. 


2. Cesar. 


1. Socorro. 


3. 


Guateque. 




2. Barichara. 


4. 


Leiva. 


Sabanilla. (Sb.) Cap. Bar- 


3. Charala. 


5. 


Miraflores. 


ranquilla. 


4. Jordan, cab. Aratoca. 


6. 


Ramiriqui, cab. Turmeque. 


1. Barranquilla. 

2. Sabanalarga. 
8. Soledad. 


5. Oiba. 

6. Sanjil. 

7. Zapatoca. 


1. 


Valle Dupae. (Vd.) 
Valle Dupar. 


San Martin Terr. (Sn.) 


Tundama. (Td.) Cap. Santa 


2. 


Chiriguana. 




Rosa. 




Velez. (Vz.) 


Santamarta. (Sm.) 


1. Santa Rosa. 


1. 


Velez. 


1. Santamarta. 


2. CocM. 


2. 


Chiquinquira. 


2. Cienega. 


8. Ricaurte, cab. Sativa Norte. 


3. 


Moniquira. 



IV. ALPHABETICAL LIST OF PLACES IN NEW GRANADA. 

The territorial divisions are indicated by having attached to them their popu- 
lation in 1853. The abbreviations refer to the provinces, and the number an- 
nexed, the cantones in the above list. The remaining numbers refer to the pages 
of this work. The names of PROVINCES, STATES, and TERRITOEIES are 
in LARGE CAPITALS, Cantones in small capitals, Aldeas or imperfect dis- 
tricts in Italics, Districts in Roman letter, with the population attached. Lakes 
and ponds are marked L. ; summits, A. (Alto) ; paramos, P. ; mountains, Mt., and 
rivers, R. To these last are added the names of the waters into which they emp- 
ty ; r signifies from the right bank, I from the left. Capitals of provinces are 
designated by **, cabeceras of cantones by *, post-towns with weekly mail by J, 
and towns with 26 mails a year by f. 

The accentuation is given on the same principle as in Appendix I. 



Abejorral t, An. 7; 6801. 

Achi, Mp. 3 ; 1002. 

Agrado, Nv. 3; 2723. 

Agua-caliente, Mq. 1 ; 358 

Agua-chica, Oc. 1 ; 701. 

Aguada, Vz. 1 ; 2462. 

Aguadas, An. 7 ; 5377. 

Agua-larga, B. 8; 125 

Agua-nueva, B. 1; 222 

Aipe, Nv. 1 ; 3449. 

Alanje, I. 2 ; 16,654. 

Alanje, I. 2; 3149. 

Algarrobo, Mq. 3 ; 827. 

Algodonal, R. , Oc, is the Catatumbo. 

Almaguer * t, Pp. 2 ; 5529. 

Almorzadero, B 10 ; 283 

Alpujarra, Nv. 4; 2418. 

Amaga, An. 2 ; 30,536. 

Amaga * t, An. 2 ; 4717. 

Amain * t, An. 5 ; 2738. 

Ambalema, Mq. 2 ; 17,892. 

Ambal6ma * t, Mq. 2 ; 9781. 

Anapoima, B. 10; 2362; - 346 

Ancuya, Ps. 5; 1758. 

Angostura de Nare, "Vz. ; 75 

Angostura, An. 8; 2944. 

Anjeles, Oc. 161. 

Anolaima, B. 10 ; 5286. 

Anori, An. 8 ; 1924. 

Anserma, Cc. 2 ; 2628. 

Anserma-nuevo * t, Cc 2 ; 1609. 

Ansdi'ma-viejo, Cc. 2; 1014. 

ANTIOQUIA, An., 243,388. 

Antioquia, An. 3 ; 24,439. 

Antioquia * t, An. 3 ; 8687. 

Anton, I. 12 ; 3711. 

Anza, An. 3 ; 4390. 



Apoporis, R., Mc. ; Caqueta, R. I. 

Apulo, R., B. 12 ; Bogota, R. r. 286. 

Arama, B. 11 ; 100. 

Aratoca * t, Sc. 4 ; 5091. 

Arauca, Cs. 2; 1954. 

Arauca * t, Cs. 2 ; 154S. 

Arauca, R., Cs. ; Orinoco, R. I. 

Arauquita, Cs. 2; 289. 

Arboledas, Pm. 9 ; 1433. 

Ariporo, R., Cs. ; Meta, R. I. 

Arjona, Ct. 7 ; 2623 ; 

Arma, R., An. ; Cauca, R. r. 

Anna, An. 7 ; 433. 

Arrayan, I. 5; 528. 

Arrayanal, Ch. 1 ; 1125. 

Arroyo de Piedra, Sb. 2 ; 342. 

Arroyo-grande, Ct. 1 ; 365. 

Arroyo-hondo, hacienda, Bv. 1 ; 

Arroyo-hondo, Ct. 7 ; 863 ; 

Arvela, Pp. 2 ; 1542. 

Arzobispo, E. del, B. ; Bogota, R. I. 

Aserradero, B. 8; 

Aspiisica, Oc. 1; 1317. 

Aspinwall, I. 9, is Colon. 

Atabapo, R., Sn ; Guaviare, R. r. 

Ataco, Mq. 8; 1090. 

Atalaya, I. 10 ; 1059. 

Atanques, Vd. 1 ; 381. 

Atrato, Cb. 1 ; 22,597. 

Atrato, R., Ch. ; Caribbean Sea. 

Aurora, hacienda, Cc 1; 

Ayapel, Ct. 5 ; 2015. 

Azero, Cs. 2; 44. 

Azufral de Quindio, Mq. 1 ; 

Badillo, Vd. 1 ; 1098. 
Baganique, Tj., is Ramiriqui 



524 
53 



211 
125 



507 
357 



576 



APPENDIX. 



Baja, Pm. 2; 632. 

Balsa, Cc. 3; 199; 8T2 

Balsa, R., Vz., is the Fuquene. 

Bananes, R., I. ; Caribbean Sea. 

Banco t, Sm. 3 ; 10T0 ; 64 

Baebacoas, Ps. 2 ; 9252. 

Barbaodas * t, Ps. 2 ; 5049. 

Barbosa, An. 1 ; 3504. 

Barcinal, Cc. 3 ; 371 

Babichaka, Sc. 2; 23,OS0. 

Barichara * i, Sc. 2; 8905. 

Barranca, Sb. 1 ; 2465. 

Barrdnca-bermeja t, Sc. 7; 51. 

Barranca-nueva, Ct. 7; 1198. 

Barrdnca-vieja, Ct. 7; 400. 

Barrancas, Rh. 1 ; 1786. 

Barranco, Mp. 1 ; 1086. 

Babeanquilla, Sb. 1 ;. 12,265. 

Barranquilla ** t, Sb. 1 ; 6114 ; ^36 

Barro-blanco, B. 5 ; 853 

Bdrro-bldnco, Cs. 5 ; 827. 

Baru, Ct. 1 ; 573. 

Bata, R., Tj., is the Boyaca. 

Baudo, Ch. 2 ; 3036. 

Baudo, R., Ch. ; Pacific. 

Bebara t, Ch. 1 ; 4034. 

Bebara, R. Ch. 1 ; Atrato, R. r. 

Becerril, Vd. 2 ; 492. 

Belen, An. 1 ; 3805. 

Belen, Td. 1 ; 5007. 

Belmira, An. S ; 1448. 

Berruecos, R., Ps. 1 ; Patia, R. I. ; 252 

Beteitiva, Td. 1 ; 2971. 

Betoyes, Cs. 3 ; 269. 

Betulia, Sc. 7 ; 1840. 

Bituima, B. 10 ; 4468. 

Boavita, Td. 4 ; 4415. 

Boca-chica, Ct. 1; 440; 42 

Bdca-chlca, I. 2 ; 104. 

Bdca del Carare t, Sc. 

Boca del Monte, B. 1; 290 

Boca-grande, Ct. 1;. 42 

Bocas del Dragon, I. 4; 78. 

Bocas del Toeo, I. 4 ; 625. 

Bocas del Toro * t, I. 4; 547. 

Bochalema, Pm. 10 ; 612. 

Bocon, R., Sn. ; Inirida, R. r. 

BOGOTA, B. 336,702; 240 

Bogota, B. 1. ; 47,988. 

Bogota ** t, B. 1 ; 29,649 ; 152 

Bogota, R., B. ; Magdalena, R. r.; 136 

Bogota Plain; 126 

Bojaca, B. 5; 2037. 

Bolano, I. 6 (pop. not known). 

Bolivar, Vz. 1 ; 4188. 

Bolivia, hacienda, Bv. 1 ; 537. 

B&nda, Sm. 1 ; 325. 

Boqueron, B. 1 ; 220 

Boqueron, B. 7 ; 315 

Boquerdn, I. 2 ; 845. 

Boqvda, Cc. 3 ; 198 ; 371 

Botello, Venta, B. 5, 128 

Boyaca, Tj. 1; 4051 ; 235 

Boyaca, R., Tj., Cs. ; Upia, R. r. 

Boza, B. 1 ; 1124 ; 273 

Boza, R, B. 1; Bogota, R. I. 

Brotare, Oc. 1 ; 462. 

Bocabamanga, Pm. 2; 21,983. 

Bucaramanga * t, Pm. 2 ; 10,008 ; 207 

Bttenaventuea, Bv. ; 31,150. 

Buenaventdra * t, Bv. 2; 1956 ; 20, 539 

Buenavlsta, Ct. 4; 337. 

Buenavista, Mq. 1; 357 

Buenavista, Oc. 1 ; 684. 

Buenavista, Vz. 2 ; 1320 ; 90 

Buenosaires, Pp. 5; 3024. 

Buesaco, Ps. 1 ; 1366. 

Buga, Cc. 1 ; 14,970. 

Buga ** t, Cc. 1 ; 6513 ; 502 

Buga, R., Cc. 1, is Piedras, R. 



459 
459 



437 



390 



Bugdba, I. 2 ; 331. 

Buga-la-grande, Cc. 7 ; 2098 ; 

Buga-la-grande, R., Cc. 7; Cauca, R. r. 

Burila, Oc. 3 ; 

Buritica, An. 3 ; 1999. 

Burro, Cienega, Cc. 3; 

Busbanza, Td. 1 ; 1070. 



Cabal, Cc. 8 ; 671. 

Cabana, hacienda, Cc. 3; 

Cabrera, Sc. 2; 5037. 

Cabrera, R., Nv. ; Magdalena, R. r. 

Cabuyaro, B. 11 ; 127. 

Caceres, An. 8 ; 1008. 

Cachos, Pm. 10. 

Cacota, Pm. 1; 1799. 

Cafifi t, Cs. 1 ; 218. 

Caguan, Nv. 1 ; 1198. 

Caguan, R., Mc. ; Caqueta, R, I. 

Caicedo, Bv. 1 (part of Cali). 

Caimito, Ct. 5 ; 1400. 

Cajamdrca, Bv. 3 ; 662. 

Cajibio, Pp. 1 ; 2115. 

Cajica, B. 3 ; 2008. 

Calamar t, Ct. 7 ; 458 ; 

Calambas, Nv. 3 ; 4070. 

Calamoina, Mq. 5 ; 2215. 

Caldas, An. 2 ; 2481. 

Caldas, Pp. 2 ; 21,477. 

Caldas, Vz. 2 ; 4249. 

Caldas, Mts. ; 

Caldera, I. 2; 137. 

Caldono, Pp. 5 ; 3243. 

Cali, Bv. 1 ; 19,277. 

Cali ** t, Bv. 1 ; 11,848 ; 

Cali, R., Bv. 1 ; Cauca, R. I. ; 

Calobre, I. 10; 2111. 

Caloto, Pp. 5 ; 4391 ; 

Camardnes, Rh. 1 ; 1183. 

Campamento, An. 8; 1961. 

Campoalegre, Nv. 1 ; 3365. 

Campo de la Cruz, Sb. 2 ; 2018. 

Campo-hermdso, Tj. 5; 1312. 

Canas, R., Cc. 3; Cauca, R. r.; 

Caiias-gordas, An. 3 ; 1763. 

Canazas, I. 10 ; 4245. 

Cancan, An. 5; 499. 

Candelaria, Cc. 4; 3367. 

Candelaria, Sb. 2; 760. 

Canoas, An. 4; 406. 

Canoas, hacienda, B. 10; 

Cano-de-16ro, Ct. 1 ; 260. 

Caparrapi, B. 14; 5409. 

Capilla, Td. 2 ; 3170. 

Capilla, Tj. 2 ; 3904. 

Capira, I. 5; 1287. 

Capitanejo, Pm. 3; 2300. 

Caqotba, B. 2; 26,003; 240 

Caquesa * t, B. 2 ; 6271 ; 240 

CAQUETA Territory is San Martin and 

Mocoa (pop. 3676) ; 240 

Caqueta, R., Sn. ; Amazon, R. I. 
Caracol, Ct. 9 ; 285. 

Caracoli, Cc. 3 ; 439 

Cara-de-perro or Careperro, hill, Cc. 3 ; 434 
Caramanta, R., An. ; Cauca, R. {. 
Carare, R., Vz. ; Magdalena, R. r. 
Carate, R., Oc, is the Catatumbo. 
Carcasi, Pm. 3 ; 2833. 
Carlosama, Ps. 3 ; 2731. 
Carmen, B. 12: 2373. 
Cabmen, Ct. 2; 10,828. 
Carmen * t, Ct. 2 ; 3439. 
Carmen, An. 4 ; 1810. 
Carmen, Oc. ; 2854. 
Carnicerias t, Nv. 2 ; 2020. 
Carolina, An. 8 ; 3805. 
CARTAGENA, Ct. ; 116,593. 
Caktagena, Ct. 1 ; 18,567. 
Cartagena ** t, Ct. 1 ; 9896 ; 43 



53 



525 



515 
523 



529 



416 



283 



APPENDIX. 



577 



Caetago, Cc. 3 ; 14,892. 

Cartago * t, Cc. 3 : 6744; 3T5 

Carupa, B. 13; 2651. 

CASANARE, C. 5 ; 18,573 ; 176, 240 

Casanare, R., Cs. ; Meta, R. 

Cascajal, Ct. 4; 459. 

Casiquiare, R., Cs. and Cq. ; Negro R. and 

Orinoco. 
Castrolarma, Mq. 3 ; 13,302. 
Catatumbo, R., Pm. ; Zulia, R. L 
CAUGA, Cc. ; 70,748. 
Cauca, R., Mp. ; Magdalena, R. 
Ceja, An. 6; 4108. 
Ceja de Guatape, An. 4; 1114. 
Celandia, Pp. 5 ; 1864. 
Centino, R., Vz., is Minero, R. 
Cepita, Pm. 7; 3363. 
Cerete, Ct. 3 ; 1388. 
Cerrillos, Cc. 3 ; 820. 

Cerrito, Cc. 1 ; 3331 ; 506 

Cerrito, R., Cc. 1 ; Cauca, R. r. ,• 510 

Cerrito, Pm. 3 ; 1945. 
Cesar, Rh. 2 ; 6242. 
Cesar * t, Rh. 2 ; 2550. 
Cesar, R., Sm. ; Magdalena, R. r: 
Chagres, I. 4 ; 1340. 
Chagres * t, I. 4 ; 1340. 
Chagres, R., I. ; Caribbean Sea. 
Cbaguani, B. 8 ; 1S81. 
Chame, I. 5; 1103. 
Chameza, Tj. 5 ; 607. 
ChaparrAl * t, Mg. 3; 6210. 
Chapigdna, I. 6; 268. 

Chapinero, B. 1 ; 201 

Chaquiral, hacienda, Cc. 3* 394 

Chakala, Sc. 3; 19,346. 
Charala*i, Sc 3; 8296. 
Chepo, I. 1 ; 1536. 
Chia, B. 6 ; 4424.^ 
Chiapaque, B. 2 ; 4163. 
Chicamoeha, R., Td., is the Sogamdso. 
Chima, Ct. 3 ; 2028. 
Chima, Sc. 1 ; 3010. 
Ckividn, I. 13 ; 276. 

Chimbe, B. 8; 125 

Chimichagua, Vd. 2; 681. 
Chinacota, Pm. 10 ; 2012. 
Chinevita, Tj. 2 ; 1055. 
Chinu, Ct. 5; 24,224. 
Chimin, Ct. 5; 5067. 

Chipalo, R., Mq. 1; Magdalena, R. I; 337 
Chiapaque, B. 2 ; 4163. 
Chipasaque, B. 9 ; 5S83. 
Chipata, Vz. 1 ; 7565. 
Chiquinquira, Vz. 2 ; 24,663. 
Chiquinquira * t, Vz. 2 ; 85,71 ; 186 

Chiquisa, Tj. 1; 1414. 
Chire, Cs. 3 ; 2153. 
Chire*, Cs. 3; 404. 
Chire, R., Cs. 3; Meta, R. I. 
Chiriguana, Vd. 2 ; 6403. 
Chiriguana * t, Vd. 2 ; 3578. 
Chiriqui, R., 1 ; Pacific. 
Chirivi, Tj. 6 ; 8155. 
Chiscas, Td. 2 ; 5119. 
Chita t, Td. 2 ; 7040. 
Chitaga, Pm. 1; 1220- 
Chitaraque, Vz. 3 ; 2900. 
Chivata, Tj. 1 ; 3045. 

Choachi, B. 1 ; 4691 ; 242 

Choachi, Paramo, B. 1 ; 237 

Choachi Sulphur Spring, B. 1; 242 

Chocho, hacienda, B. 7; 301 

CHOCO, Ch. ; 43,649. 
Choco, Cafio de, Pm. and Oc. 
CnocoNTA, B. 4; 31,564. 
Choconta * t, B. 4 ; S461. 
Chopo, Pm. 1 ; 1647. 
Chorrera, I. 5 ; 6475. 
Chorrera**, I. 5; 2451. 

OO 



Chorrera, R., I. ; Pacific. 

Chorrera, Rh. 1 ; 401. 

Chorro, Cc. 7; 

Chucunaque, R., I. ; Sabana, R. I. 

Cibate, B. 1 ; 

Cienega, Sm. 2 ;• 8573. 

Cienega * t, Sm. 2 ; 5078. 

Cienega, Tj. 6 ; 2985. 

Cienega-de-oro, Ct. 3 ; 13,251. 

Cienega-de-oro * t, Ct. 3; 5163. 

Cincelada, Sc. 3; 3043. 

Cincha, hacienda, B. 13 ; 

Cipacon, B. 5 ; 1747. 

Cipaquira, B. 3 - r 26,994. 

Cipaquira * t, B. 3 ; 6077. 

Cite, Vz. 1 ; 8354. 

Claro, R., Ch. ; Pacific. 

Cobarachia, Td. 4; 2702. 

Cocorona, An. 4 ; 1804. 

Cocui, Td. 2 ; 29,605. 

Cocui * t, Td. 2 ; 5729. 

Coello, Mq. 1 ; 2878 ; 

Coello, R., Mq. ; Magdalena, R. I. 

Cogua, B. 3 ; 3941. 

Coiba, I. 10; 63. 

Colejio, B. 10; 1170. 

Colombia, Nv. 4; 1673. 

Colon t, I. 9. 

Colosina, Ct. 3 ; 1152. 

Coloso, Ct. 9 ; 491. 

Combeima, R., Mq. ; Coello, R. I. , 

Combita, Tj. 1 ; 4052. 

Concepcion, An. 6 ; 1616. 

Cgncepcio^, Pm. 3; 19, 9 25. 

Concepcion * t, Pm. 3; 8619. 

Concordia, An. 2 ; 1747. 

Conejo, B. 14; 

Confines, Sc. 1 ; 3376. 

Consaca, Ps. 1 ; 2520. 

Convencion, Oc. ; 1788. 

Copacabana, An. 1 ; 4073. 

Coper, Vz. 2 ; 1040. 

Cordova, An. 9 ; 2651. 

Coromoro, Sc, 8; 2032. 

Corozal, Ct. 4 ; 13,013. 

Corozal * t, Ct. 4 ; 6351- 

Corrales, Td. 1 ; 1715. 

C6ta, B. 6 ; 1503. 

Cototdma, Rh. 1 ; 136. 

Coyaima, Nv. 4 ; 5544. 

Crece-noche, Oc, is Anjeles. 

Criices, An. 8 ; 553. 

Cruces, B. 8; 

Cruces, I. 1 ; 495. 

Cruz, Oc. ; 2682. 

Cruz, Pp. 2 ; 4176. 

Cruz Verde, Paramo, B. 1 ; 

Cuatro Esquinas, B. 6 ; 

Cuatro Esquinas, Mq. 1 ; 

Cucaita, Tj. 1; 929. 

Cucunuba, B. 13 ; 4831. 

Cucuta, Pm. 8 ; 602. 

Cucutilla, Pm. 1 ; 2844. 

Cuildto, Cs. 2; 3T. 

Cuitiva, Td. 5; 1446. 

Culatas, Sc. 1, is Confines. 

Culebrera, B. 6; 

Cumbal, Ps. 3; 2973. 

Cunacua, Sc. 5; 2264. 

Cunari, R., Mc. ; Caquetu, R. I. 

Cundai, B. 7; 2619. 

Cune, B. 8 ; 

Cupica, R., Ch. r Pacific. 

Curiti, Sc. 4 ; 4055. 

Curcio, B. 10; 

Dabeiba, An. 3; 565. 
Dagua, R., Bv. 2; Pacific: 
Darien, I. 6 ; 1209. 
David**, I. 2; 4625. 



493 

287 



i'86 



328 

322 



90 



255 
134 
340 



135 

118 
051 
20 



578 



APPENDIX. 



Dibulla, Rh. 1 ; 487. 

Dique (Canal), Ct. ; 50 

Dolega, I. 2 ; 1506. 

Dolores, Nv. 4; 3146. 

Don Matias, An. 8 ; 2648. 

Duitama, Td. 1 ; 5698. 

EbSjico, An. 9; 25T2. 

Ele, E., Cs. ; Casanare, R. I. 

Eliconia, An. 2; 2068. 

Encino, Sc. 3 ; 1284 

Enciso, Pm. 3; 2582. 

Engativa, B. 1 ; 595. 

Entrerios, An. 8 ; 1256. 

Envigado, An. 1 ; 4705. 

Escobal, B. 8 ; 125 

Espinal, Mq. 4; 18,976. 

Espinal t, Mq. 4; 6963; 321 

Espinal, hacienda, Bv. 1; 534 

Espino, Td. 2 ; 1578. 

Espiritu Santo, Vd. 1; 630. 

Estrella, An. 3; 1830. 

FACATATrvi, B. 5 ; 14,334 

Facatativa * t, B. ; 5023 ; 129 

Favara, R., I. ; Pacific. 

Firabitova, Td. 5 ; 4385. 

Flamenco, Ct. 7; 730. 

F16res, Vz. 1 ; 1276. 

Floresta, Td. 1 ; 4783. 

Florida, Cc. 4 ; 2754. 

Florida, Ps. 1 ; 3166. 

Florida, Pm. 5; 3260. 

F6meque, B. 2 ; 6645 ; 253 

Fonseca, Rh. 1; 2120. 

Fonseca, R, I. ; Pacific. 

Fontibon, B. 1; 1985; 137 

Foetoul, Pm. 4; 9568. 

Fdsca, B. 2; 1325. 

Fragua, Cs. 1, is Moreno. 

Freddnia, An. 2 ; 5786. 

Frio, R., Bv. 3 ; Cauca, R. I. ; 403 

Frisolar, Cc. 3 ; 439 

Frontino, An. 3 ; 944. 

Fucha, R., B. 1 ; Bogota, R. I. ; 226 

Fundicion, Sm. 2 ; 217. 

Funes, Ps. 1 ; 1428. 

Funza, B. 6 ; 18,744. 

Funza * t, B. 6 ; 4559 ; 134 

Funza, R., is the BogotS. 

Fuquene, B. 13 ; 2666. 

Fuquene, L., B. 13. 

Fuquene, R., Vz. ; Sogamoso, R. I. 

Fusagasuga, B. 7 ; 9967. 

Fusagasuga * t, B. 7 ; 3752 ; 294 

Fusagasuga, R., B. ; Sumapaz, R. r. ; 302 

Fusagasuga, Paso de, B. 12 ; 319 

Gachala, B. 9; 578. 

Gachancipa, B. 3 ; 1694 

Gachantiva, Tj. 4; 4029. 

Gaeheta, B. 9; 7718. 

Gaira, Sm. 1 ; 589. 

Galapa, Sb. 1 ; 958. 

Galeras, Ct. 4; 758. 

Galinavi, R., Td., is the Sogamoso. 

Gallego, Mg. 1 ; 365 

Gambita, Sc. 5 ; 2788. 

Gameza, Td. 5; 2567. 

Garachlne, I. 6 ; 162. 

Gakagoa, Tj. 2; 25,252. 

Garag6a*t, Tj. 2; 7079. 

Garagoa, R, Tj., is the Boyaca. 

Garraehe, R., I. ; Pacific. 

Garzon * t, Nv. 5 ; 8055. 

Gatun, I. 4 (pop. not known). 

GOAJIRA Terr. ; 26 

Gorgona, I. 1 ; 741. 

Guacamayas, Td. 2; 2084 

Guaca, Pm. 4; 3179. 



Guacari, Cc. 1 ; 2989. 

Guachaves, Ps. 5; 1135. 

Guacheta, B. 13; 5041. 

Guachucal, Ps. 3; 2868. 

Guacuba, R, Ch. ; Caribbean Sea, 

Guadalupe, Nv. 5; 1702. 

Guadalupe, Sc. 5; 5451. 

Guadalupe Mt., B. 1; 222 

Gtjaduas, B. 8; 30,989. 

Guaduas * t, B. 9 ; 9044; 106 

Guagua, Nv. 1; 2842. 

Guaimaro, Sm. 4; 1106. 

Guainia, R. ; Patia, R. I. 

Guaitarilla, Ps. 5; 3122. 

Gualaca, I. 2 ; 1351. 

Guali, R, Mq. ; Magdalena, R I. 

Gualoya, R., Mc. ; Caquetd, R. I. 

Guama Bridge, B. 8 ; 128 

Guamal, Sm. 3 ; 1377. 

Guamo, Ct. 2; 714 

Guamo * t, Mq. 4 ; 8577. 

Guamiies, Mc, is the Putumayo. 

Guanapalo, Cs. 1, is Cafifi. 

Guane, Sc. 2 ; 4000. 

Gu&ne, R., Sc. 1, is the Socorro. 

Guapi*t, Pp.4; 2281. 

Guapota, Sc. 1; 8035. 

Guame, An. 6 ; 3190. 

Guasca, B. 9 ; 3067. 

Guataqui, B. 12; 1076. 

Guatavita, B. 9 ; 26,632. 

Guatavita * t, B. 9 ; 5145. 

Gtjateque, Tj. 8; 21,476. 

Guateque*+, Tj. 3 ; 6025. 

Guateque, Tj. 4; 3001. 

Guatigara. 

Guativa, Cs. 3 ; 425. 

Guavas, R., Cc. 1; Cauca, R r. ; 

Guavata, Vz. 1 ; 5079. 

Guaviare, R, Cs. ; Orinoco, R. 

Guavio, R, Tj., is the Somondoco. 

Guavito, Cc. 3; 

Guavito, Cc. 7; 

Guayabal, B. 8 ; 

Guayabal, Cs. 1 ; 502. 

Guayabal, Mq. 5; 4766. 

Guayabal, R., Oc, is the Catatumbo. 

Guayata, Tj. 3; 5159. 

Guazo, Mp. 2 ; 440. 

Giiepsa, Vz. 1 ; 3156. 

Giiican, Td. 2 ; 2352. 

Giiicani, Td., is Giiican. 

Hacha, R., Rh. ; Caribbean Sea. 

Hatillo, Mp. 1 ; 459. 

Hato, Sc. 1 ; 1634. 

Hato de Lemos, Cc. 6 ; 2889. 

Hato Viejo, B. 4; 4504 

Hato Viejo, An. 1; 1917. 

Higuerdn, An. 8; 934. 

Honda, Mq. 5; 16,335. 

Honda * t, Mq. 5 ; 8069 ; 95 

Honda, R, Cc. 3 ; Cauca, R. I. ; 392 

H6yo del Aire, Vz. ; 263 

Hunza, Tj., is Tunja. 

Ibagtje, Mq. 1 ; 20,480. 

Ibague ** t, Mq. 1 ; 7162; 323 

lea, R., Mc, is the Putumayo. 

Icononzo Bridge is Pandi. 

lies, Ps. 8; 1448. 

Imues, Ps. 5; 987. 

Inza, Nv. 3 ; 2687. 

Inirida, R., SMn. ; Guaviare, R. I. 

Ipiales, Ps. 3; 22,373. 

Ipiales*t, Ps. 3; 6646. 

Iquira, Nv. 2 ; 1715. 

Iraca, Td., is Sogamoso. 

Isabel Lopez, Sb. 2 ; 400. 

ISTMO, ESTADO DEL, I. ; 138,208. 



505 



423 
497 
123 



APPENDIX. 



579 



Itagfii, An. 2 ; 5182. 
I toco, Vz. 2; 1121. 
Ituango, An. 3 ; 1175. 
Iza, Td. 5; 1395. 
Izcr/ANDE, Pp. 3 ; 5441. 
Izcuande * +, Pp. 3 ; 5441. 

Jagua, Nv. 5; 1674. 

Jagua, Vd. 2; 524. 

Jambalo, Pp. 5 ; 1968. 

Jegua, Ct. 5 ; 561. 

Jenesano, Tj. 6 ; 4510. 

Jeneseno, E., Tj., is the Boyack. 

Jerico, Td. 8; 3458. 

Jesus Maria, Vz. 1, is Valle. 

Jicaramata, Cc. 7; 496 

Jigantei, Nv. 5; 3213. 

Jimani, Ct. 1; 43 

Jimena, Pp. 1 ; 1197. 

Jiradota, An. 1 ; 3149. 

Jiramena, B. 11 ; 242. 

Jiron, Pm. 5; 12,576. 

Jiron*i, Pm. 5; 9133. 

Jobo, Vd. 1 ; . 

Jordan, Sc. 4 ; 9146. 

Juanambii, R., Ps. ; Patia, R. 

Juan de Acdsta, Sb. 1 ; 848. 

Julumito, Pp. 1 ; 1241. 

Juntas, Bv. 2 ; 20. 

Juntas, B. 12 ; 

Jupura, R., Mc, is the Caquet6. 

Labateca, Pm. 1 ; 1913. 

Labranza-grande * t, Cs. 4 ; 3379. 

Laguna, R., Pp. ; Patia, R. I. 

Laguna-grande, pond, B. 2 ; 

Lagunetas, Cc. 3 ; 

Lajas, R, Cc. 8; Cauca, R. I. ; 

Lajas, Ps. 3 ; 

Lebrija, R., Oc. ; Magdalena, R. r. 

Leiva, Tj. 4 ; 22,219. 

Leiva**, Tj. 4; 3395. 

Leiva, R., is the Moniquira. 

Lemos, Hato de, Cc. 6 ; 2889. 

Lenguasaque, B. 13; 3479. 

Lerida, Mq. 2 ; 5025. 

Liborina, An. 9 ; 1273. 

Libraida, Cc. 3 ; 2151 ; 

Limas, Nv. 5 ; 2576. 

Limoncito, Pm. 10; 368. 

Lipa, R., Cs. ; Ele, R. I. 

Lloro, Ch. 1 ; 4035. 

Loba, Mp. 1 ; 1039. 

Loma de Corredor, Oc. ; 401. 

L6ma de Indijenr.s, Oc. ; 513. 

LorIca, Ct. 6 ; 7493. 

Lorica**, Ct. 6; 3532. 

Macaguane, Cs. 3 ; 183. 

Macanal, Tj. 2 ; 2567. 

Macao, R, Cs. ; Sarare, R. I. 

Macaracas, I. 11 ; 2708. 

Macaravita, Pm. 8; 2550. 

Macheta, B. 4 ; 6270. 

Magangfje, Mp. 2; 6832. 

Magangue * t, Mp. 2 ; 2512. 

Magdalena, R. ; Caribbean Sea. 

Hague, B. 7; 301 

Magui, R., Ps. ; Patia, R I. 

Mahates, Ct. 7 ; 12,659. 

Mahates * $, Ct. 7 ; 1278 ; 50 

Majagual, Mp. 3 ; 5227. 

Majagual**, Mp. 3; 2409. 

Malaga, Pm. 6 ; 11,175. 

Malaga* t, Pm. 6; 4410. 

Malagavita, Pm. 6 ; 3899. 

Malambo, Sb. 3 ; 853. 

Males, Ps. 3 ; 1620. 

Mallama, Ps. 5 ; 1266. 

Mamatoco, Sm. 1 ; 343. 



345 



248 
372 
894 
517 



412 



Manare, Cs. 3 ; 289. 

Manati, Sb. 3 ; 799. 

Manizales, An. 7 ; 2809. 

Manta, B. 4 ; 5303. 

Maquivor, Cs. 1 ; 120. 

Maranon, R, is the Amazon. 

Margarita, Mp. 1 ; 1827 ; 

Maria la Baja, Ct. 7; 266. 

MaeinJlla, An. 4 ; 17,909. 

Marinilla * t, An. 4 ; 8414. 

Maripi, Vz. 2 ; 890. 

MARIQUITA, Mq. ; 86,985; 

Mariquita, Mq. 5; 1737. 

Marocdso, Rh. 2 ; 93. 

Marroquin, Cs. 4 ; 469. 

Matanza, Pm. 2; 8582. 

Mave, B. 8 ; 

Mayasquer, Ps. 8; 212. 

Mayo, R, Ps. ; Patia, R. I 

Medellin, An. 1; 38,610. 

Medellin ** t, An. 1 ; 13,755. 

Medialuna, Sm. 2; 529. 

Medina *, B. 11 ; 913. 

Medio, Cc. 3; 

Melgar, B. 12; 2600; 

Mendez, Mq. 5 ; 1043 ; 

Mercaderes, Pp. 2 ; 1712. 

Meredia, Sn. 5; 1910. 

Mesa, B. 10; 28,545. 

Mesa*t, B. 10; 6012; 

Mesa, I. 10; 2542. 

Meta, R, Cs. ; Orinoco, R. I. ; 

Mioai, Pp. 4; 8853. 

Micai, Pp. 4; 2296. 

Micai, R, Pp.; Pacific. 

Micos, R, Cc. 3; Cauca, I. ; 

Miel, R., Mq. ; Magdalena, R. I. 

Minas, I. 8 ; 1642. 

Minas, Cc. 7; 

Mineral, I. 10 ; 282. 

Mira, R., Ps. ; Pacific. 

Miraflores, Mq. 1 ; 680. 

Mirafloreb, Tj. 5; 8887. 

Mirafldres * t, Tj. 5 ; 5002. 

MOCOA Terr., Mc. 

Mocoa ** t, Mc. 

Mocu, R., Cs. ; Vichada, R. I. 

Mogotes, Sc. 6 ; 6568. 

Molineea, I. 6 ; 77. 

Molino, Rh. 2; 1246. 

Momil, Ct. 6 ; 617. 

MOMPOS, Mp. ; 30,207. 

Mompos, Mp. 1 ; 13,711. 

Mompos ** t, Mp. 1 ; 7336 ; 

Mongua, Td. 5; 2461. 

Mongiii, Td. 5 ; 1540. 

Moniquira, Vz. 3 ; 20,734. 

Moniquira * t, Vz. 3 ; 9127. 

Moniquira, R., Vz. ; Fuquene, R. r. 

Monteria, Ct. 3; 2039. 

Montijo, I. 10 ; 2009. 

Moncerrate, mountain, B. 1 ; 

Moral, Mq. 1 ; 

Morales, I., Mp. 4 

Morales, Mp. 4 ; 1094. 

Morcote, Cs. 4; 721. 

Moreno ** t, Cs. 1 ; 1365. 

Moreno, Rh. 1 ; 772. 

Morillo, hacienda; 

Mortllo, R., Cc. ; 5 & 7; Cauca, R r. 

Morroa, Ct. 4; 772. 

Motavita, Tj. 1 ; 1275. 

Muneque t, Cs. ? 

Murind6, Ch. 1 ; 2007. 

Murri, Ch. 1 ; 2009. 

Muni, R., Ch. ; Atrato, R r. 

Mutiscua, Pm. 1 ; 982. 

Miizo t, Vz. 2; 862. 

Napipi, R, Ch. ; Atrato, R. I 



64 



333 



123 



417 
318 
342 



346 
236 



390 
490 



00 



214 
357 



455 
455 



580 



APPENDIX. 



Naranjo, Cc. S, is Obando. 

Naret, Mq. 5; 1054; 

Nare, B., An. ; Magdalena, B. I. 

Narino, An. 7; 460. 

Narino, B. 12; 1048. 

Nata, I. 7; 12,831. 

Nata * t, I. 7 ; 8029. 

Nataga, Nv. 2 ; 471. 

Natagaima i, Nv. 4; 403S. 

Xecht, An. 5 ; 4T8. 

Nechi, E., An. ; Cauca, E. r. 

Negro, E. ; Amazon, R I. 

Negro, E, An., is the Nare. " 

Negro, E, Vz. ; Magdalena, E. r. 

Neira, An. 7 ; 8606. 

Neira, Nv. 1 ; 1706. 

NEIVA, Nv. ; 101,772. 

Neiva, Nv. 1 ; 26,7S0. 

Neiva ** t, 7719. 

Neiva, E., Nv. ; Magdalena, E. r. 

Neme, B. 8; 

Nemocon, B. 3 ; 3018. 

Nepomuceno, Ct. 2 ; 1904. 

Nerviti, Ct. 2 ; 113. 

Nilo, B. 12; 1815. 

Nimaima, B. S ; 901. 

Xisperal, Sb. 1 ; 

Noanama, Ch. 2; 8510. 

Nobsa, Td. 1 ; 2951. 

Nocaima, B. S; 2590. 

Nordoeste, An. 2 ; 834S. 

Norosi, Mp. 4; 324. 

Novillero, hacienda, B. 7 ; 

Novita* t, Ch. 2; 6097. 

Nueva Caramanta, An. 2 ; 1154. 

Nttnchia, Cs. 4; 6583. 

Nunchia, Cs. 4; 531. 

Obando, Cc. 3 ; 2069 ; 

Ocamonte, Sc. 3 ; 2555. 

OCANA, Oc. ; 23,450. 

Ocana, Oc. 1 ; 23,450. 

Ocana** t, Oc. 1; 5046; 

Occidents, Nv. 2; 9494 

Ocu, I. 8 ; 55S0. 

Oiba, Sc. 5; 21,792. 

oiba* t, Sc. 5; 6876. 

Oicata. Tj. 1 ; 231'J. 

Ola, I. 7 ; 710. 

Onzaga, Sc. 6 ; 6026. 

Opia (ferry), Mq. 1 ; 

Opia, E., Mq. ; Magdalena, E. 7. ; 

Opon, E., Sc. ; Magdalena, E. I. 

Organos, Nv. 1 ; 510. 

Orinoco, E., Cs. ; Atlantic. 

Oro, E., Pm. 5, is the Lebrija. 

Oro, E., Oc. ; Lebrija, E r. 

Oro, E., Oc, is the Catatumbo. 

Oro, E., Oc. ; Catatumbo, B, I. 

Orta, E., Vz. 

Ospina, Ps. 5 ; 1061. 

Ortega, Mq. 8 ; 6002. 

Otoque, I. 13 ; 347. 

Otro Mundo, Vz. 1. 

Ovejas, Ct. 9 ; 1748. 

Overo, Cc. 7 ; 

Pachavita, Tj. 2; 3836. 

Pacho, B. 3 ; 3326. 

Pacora, An. 7 ; 8610. 

Pdcara, I. 1 ; 773. 

Paez, E., Nv. ; Magdalena, E. Z. 

Paicol t, Nv. 3 ; 1121. 

Paila, B., Cc. ; Cauca, E. r. ; 

Paila, hacienda, Cc. 3 ; 

Piume, B. 13 ; 731. 

liVpa, Td. 1; 6614. 

Paipa, E., Td. ; Sogamoso, E. I. 

Pajarito, Cs. 5; 575. 

Palenque, I. 9 ; 249. 



76 



90, 122 



842 



30 



300 



206 



341 

340 



457 



417 
417 



Palsia, B. 14; 18,120. 

Palma * t, B. 14; 4432. 

Palma, Oc. ; 100S. 

Palmar, Sc. 1 ; 2129. 

Palmar, hacienda, B. 8; 

Palmar de Candelaria, Sb. 2 ; 833. 

Palmar de Varela, Sb. 3 ; 1050. 

Palmarito, Mp. 3; 989. 

Palmas, I. 10 ; 3004. 

Palmas, Sc. 1 ; 3322. 

Palmilla, Mq. 1 ; 

Palmira, Cc. 4; 16,176. 

Palmira * t, Cc. 4; 10,055; 

Palmira, Vd. 1 ; 294. 

Palmito, Ct. 9 ; 772. 

PAMPLONA, Pm. ; 139,039. 

Pamplona, Pm. 1 ; 22,922. 

Pamplona ** {, Pm. 1 ; 9095. 

Panama, I. 1 ; 10,111. 

Panama ** t, I. 1 ; 6566. 

Pandi, B. 7; 2533; 

Pandi, bridge, B. 7; 

Pdnga, Ps. 5; 590. 

Paniquita, Pp. 1 ; 2413. 

Panqueva, Td. 2 ; 1483. 

Paramo, Sc. 1 ; 3218. 

Pare, Vz. 8; 4602. 

Pakita, I. 8 ; 17,093. 

Parita * t, I. S ; 3019. 

Pasacaballos, Ct. 1 ; 227. 

Pasca, B. 7; 488. 

Paso, Vd. 2 ; 779. 

PASTO, Ps. ; 82,952; 

Pasto, Ps. 1; 27,620. 

Pasto ** t, Ps. 1 ; 8136. 

Patia, Pp. 1 ; 2377. 

Patia, E., Ps. ; Pacific. 

Pauna, Vz. 2 ; 2435. 

Puvas, Bv. 1 ; 328. 

Paya, Cs. 4 ; 1194. 

Payande, Mq. 1; 1584. 

Paz, Td. 3 ; 2460. 

Paz, Vd. 1 ; 837. 

Paz, Vz. 1 ; 3008. 

Pedasi, I. 11; 70S. 

Pedrdl, Pm. 5; 183. 

Pena, B. 14 ; 3603. 

Penol, An. 4 ; 5361. 

Peiidn, B. 14; 1504. 

Penonome * t, I. 12 ; 8703. 

Peralonso, E., Pm. 

Pesca, Td. 5; 7690. 

Pescaderias, B. 8 ; 

Pescado, E. ; Caqueta, E. I. 

Pescador, Bv. 8; 1752. 

Pese, I. 8 ; 4732. 

Petaquero, Sc. 6 ; 211S. 

Petaquero, A., B. 8; 

Picazo, hill, Cc. 7; 

Piedecuesta, Pm. 7; 20,20S. 

Piedecuesta* }, Pm. 7; 14,841. 

Pie de la Popa, Ct. 1 ; 875 ; 

Piedra de Moler, Cc. 3 ; 

Piedras, An. 2 ; 630. 

Piedrast, Mq. 1; 5575; 

Piedras, E., Cc. 1; Cauca, E. r. ,' 

Pifia, canal, Sb. 1 ; 

Pinchote, Sc. 6; 2602. 

Pinillos, Mp. 1 ; 526. 

Pinogdna, I. 6 ; 164. 

Pinon, Sm. 5 ; 2027. 

Pintada, I. 12 ; 3155. 

Pinto, Sm. 3 ; 367. 

Piojo, Sb. 2; 604. 

Pisva, Cs. 4; 289. 

Pital t, Nv. 3 ; 23SS. 

Pitalito, Nv. 5 ; 1766. 

Pivijai, Sm. 2 ; 1525. 

Plata, An. 6; 141. 

Plata, Nv. 3; 18,826. 



117 



356 
513 



310 



251 



101 



121 
490 



46 
873 

340 
503 
40 



APPENDIX. 



581 



Plata**, Nv. 3: 3212. 

Platan al, Cc. 7; 

Platanal, E., Ch; Pacific. 

Plato, Sm. 3 ; TOTO. 

Plato* t, Sm. S; 1516. 

Playa, Sb. 1 ; 

Playas, Cc. 7 ; 

Pocri, I. 11 ; 1702. 

Poima, Sc., is Oiba. 

Polo-nuevo, Sb. 3; 611. 

Ponedera, Sb. 2; 404. 

Ponuga, I. 10 ; 694. 

Pdpa, hill, Ct. 1 ; 

POPAYAN, Pp. 91,399. 

Popayan, Pp. 1 ; 85,889. 

Popayan ** t, 7010 ; 

Popoa, R., Vz. ; Fiiquene, R. I. 

Pore, Cs. 1 ; 5554. 

Pore, Cs. 1 ; 906. 

Portezuela, Cc. 7 ; 

Portezuela, Cc. 8; 

Poetobelo, I. 9 ; 1434. 

Portobelo *, I. 9 ; 1185. 

Pradot, Nv. 4; 2335. 

Providencia, I., Ct. 8; 640. 

Pueblo-nuevo, Oc. 1 ; 286. 

Pueblo-viejo, B. 2, is Une? 

Pueblo-viejo, Sm. 2; 1224. 

Pueblo-viejo, Td. 5; 8540. 

Puente Grande, B. 6 ; 

Puente Nacional t, Vz. 1 ; 10,018. 

Puerta, hacienda, B. 7 ; 

Puerto del Carare t, Sc. 

Puerto Nacional t, Oc. ; 420; 

Puerto Ocana, Oc, is P. Nacional. 

Puerto Real, Oc, is P. Nacional. 

Puli, B. 12; 2015. 

Pupiales, Ps. 3 ; 3S80. 

Purace, Pp. ; 2138. 

Purace, volcano, Pp. 1; 

Pueificacion, Nv. 4 ; 26,978. 

Purification * i, Nv. 4 ; 7829. 

Purisima, Ct. 6 ; 1127. 

Putumayo, R. ; Amazon, R. I. 

Quebrada-negra, B. 8 ; 3486. 
Quebrada-seca, An. 9 ; 1557. 
Queremal, Bv. 1 ; 
Queteme, B. 2; 1874. 
Quibdo ** t, Ch. 1 ; 8471. 
Quilichao * t, Pp. 5 ; 4222. 
Quinchia, Cc. 3 ; 727. 
Quindio, R., Cc. ; Vieja, R. r. ; 
Quindio, Mts. ; 
Quindio, Paramo; 
Quipile, B. 10 ; 1630. 
Quita-palanca, Mq. 5; 
Quito, hacienda, B. 6 ; 
Quito, R., Ch. ; Atrato, R. 

Raisill, Alto, B. 8; 
RamieiquI, Tj. 6; 42,290. 
Ramiriqui, Tj. 6 ; 8024. 
Raposo, Bv. 2 ; 3388 ; 
Raposo, Bv. 2 ; 1382. 
Raquira, Tj. 4; 4727. 
Recetort, Cs. 5; 285. 
Remedios, I. 2 ; 1584 
Remedios, An. 5; 1572. 
Remolino, Sm. 4; 6036. 
Remolino * t, Sm. 4 ; 2020 ; 
Remolino t, An., on Nare R. 
Retiro, hacienda, B. 7 ; 
Retiro, An. 6; 6115. 
Retiro, Mp. 2 ; 761. 
Retiro, Nv. 2 ; 1750. 
Riachuelo, Sc. 3; 2136. 
Ribera, hacienda, Cc. 7 ; 
Ricaurte, B. 1 ; 1929. 
Ricauete, Td. 3 ; 19,378. 



135, 



35 
495 



46 
331 



457 

372 



254 



m 



19 



517 



871 
355 

S70 

92 
354 



117 



540 



SOS 



463 



Rioclaro, Bv. 1 ; 1855. 
Rio de Jesus, I. 10; 1615. 
Rio-de-6ro, Oc 1 ; 1372. 
Riofrio, Bv. 3; 1321. 
RIOHACHA, Rh. ; 17,247; 
Riohaoha, Rh. 1; 11,005. 
Riohacha ** t, Rh. 1 ; 2974 
Rionegeo, An. 6 ; 82,533. 
Rionegro * t, An. 6 ; 8099. 
Rionegro, Pm. 2; 4013. 
Rioseco, B. 8 ; 3447. 
Riosdco, R. ; Magdalena, R. r. 
Riosucio, Cc. 5; 4104. 
Rioviejo, Mp. 4; 806. 
Robada, Sc. 2 ; 5138. 
Roble, Cc. 3 ; 
Roble, B. 5; 
Rocha, Ct. 1 ; 527. 
Roldanillo, Bv. 3; 8535. 
Roldanillo * t, Bv. 3 ; 4800 ; 
Rosal, Pp. 2; 8498. 
Rosaeio, Pm. 8 ; 3710. 
Rosario * t, Pm. 8 ; 3108. 
Bosdrio, Rh. 2 ; 186. 
Ruiz, Paramo, Mq. 1 ; 



20 



342 



371 
12£ 



215 



459 
459 
512 

126 



30 



Sabaleta, R., Ch. ; Pacific. 

Sabaletas, An. 6 ; 1670. 

Sabaletas, hacienda, Cc. 7 ; 

Sabaletas, R., Cc 7; Cauca, R. r. ; 

Sabaletas, R., Cc. 1 ; Cauca, R. r. ; 

Sabana, R., I. ; Pacific. 

Sabana de Bogota ; 

Sabana-grande, Sb. 3; 1546. 

Sabana-larga, An. 3; 948. 

•Sabana-larga, Sb. 2; 12,636. 

Sabana-larga * t, Sb. 2 ; 5070. 

Sabaneta, Ct. 6 ; 322. 

SABANILLA, Sb. ; 151,950. 

Sabanillat, Sb. 1; 

Sabdga, I. 6 (pop. not known). 

Saboya, Vz. 2 ; 4475. 

Sacaojal, An. 9 ; 1963. 

Sachica, Tj. 4; 893. 

Sahagun, Ct 5 ; 3497. 

Salado, Bv. 1 ; 137S. 

Salahonda, Ps. 4; 473. 

Salamina, An. 7 ; 40,399. 

Salamina t, An. 7 ; 7559. 

Salamina, Sm. 4; 409 x 

Salazae, Pm. 9 ; 7313. 

Salazar * J, Pm. 9 ; 4631. 

Salina, Td. 2 ; 1150. 

Salitre, B. 8; 

Saloa, Vd. 2 ; 170. 

Samaca, Tj. 1 ; 4204 

Samaniego, Ps. 5 ; 2009. 

Sambrimo, Ct. 2 ; 470. 

Sampues, Ct. 5; 3401. 

San Agustln, Ct. 2 ; 94. 

San Agustin, R., B. 1 ; San Francisco, R. I. ; 154 

San Andres, An. 3 ; 115S. 

San Andres, Ct. 5 ; 5511. 

San Aub-bes, Ct. S ; 1915. 

San Andres * t, Ct. 8 ; 1275. 

San Andres* t , Pm. 4; 63S9. 

San Antero, Ct. 6 ; 907. 

San Antonio, B. 10; 1231. 

San Antonio (ruins), B. 10; 

San Antonio, Nv. 3 ; 2625. 

San Antonio, Oc 1 ; 511. 

San Antonio * t, Sm. 5 ; 3084. 

San Eartolome, An. 5 ; 307. 

San Basilic, Ct. 7 ; 477. 

San Benito, Ct. 5 ; 966. 

San Benito, Ct. 7 ; 1644. 

San Benito, Vz. 1 ; 2196. 

San Bernardo, Ct. 6 ; 272. 

San Bernardo, Oc 1 ; 244. 

San CaVisto, Oc. 1 ; 3S3. 



123 



351 



582 



APPENDIX. 



43 



154 



San Carlos, An. 4 ; 760. 

San Carlos, I. 5 ; 1111. 

San Cayetdno, Ct. 7 ; 42 r. 

San Cayetano, Pm. 10 ; 982. 

San Crist6val, An. 1 ; 1467. 

San Estanislao, Ct. 7; 2300. 

San Faustino, Pm. 10 ; 544 

San Felipe de Barajas, fort, Ct. 1 ; 

San Felix, I. 2; 515. 

San Fernando, Mp. 1 ; 714. 

San Fernando, Sm. 3 ; 419. 

San Francisco, E., B. 1 ; Bogota, E. I. ; 

San Francisco, I. 10 ; 4885. 

San Jacinto, Ct. 2; 2479. 

San Jer6nimo, An. 9 ; 2353. 

SaujJl, Sc. 6 ; 32,848. 

Sanjil * t, Sc 6 ; 11,528. 

San Jdrje, E., Mp. ; Cauca, E. I. 

San Jose, Pm. 10; 10,259. 

San Jose * t, Pm. 10 ; 5741. 

San Jose, Ps. 2 ; 3000. 

San Jttan, Ch. 2; 21,052. 

San Juan, Cc. 5 ; 1559. 

San Juan, E, An. 2; Cauca, E. I. 

San Juan, E., Bv. ; Daqua, E. 

San Juan, E., I. ; Pacific. 

San Juan, E., Ch. ; Pacific. 

San Juan, Eh. 2, is Cesar. 

San Juan, E., Mq. 1, is the Coello. 

San Lazaro, mount, Ct. 1 ; 43 

San Lorenzo, I. 2 ; 1777. 

San Lucia, E., I. ; Pacific. 

San Luis, Mq. 4 ; 3436. 

San Mdrcos, Ct. 5 ; 754. 

San Marcos, E., Cc. 7; Tulua, E. r.; 491 

San Marcos, hacienda, Bv. 1 ; 525 

San Martin, B. 11 ; 2870 ; 240 

San Martin t, B. 11 ; 668. 

San Mateo, An. 3 ; 656. 

San Miguel, I. 4 (pop. not known). 

San Miguel, Pm. 3 ; 2900. 

San Miguel, I. 13 ; 1941. 

San Miguel, Eh. 1 ; 116. 

San Miguel, E, Mc. ; Putumayo, B. r. 

San Miguel, Cc. 3 ; 436, 462 

San Nicholas, Ct. 6 ; 849. 

San Ondfre, Ct. 9 ; 2659. 

San Pablo, Ps. 2 ; 1208. 

San Pablo, I. 2 ; 730. 

San Pablo, Mp. 4; 233; 72 

San Pedro, An. 8 ; 4666. 

San Pedro, Cs. 5; 128. 

San Pedro, Cc. 1 ; 2137; 501 

San Pedro, Oc. 1 ; 342. 

San Pelayo, Ct. 3 ; 1481. 

San Sebastidn, An. 9 ; 821. 

San Sebastian, Ct. 6 ; 367. 

San Sebastian, Sm. 3 ; 800. 

San Sebastian, Mp. 2 ; 33S. 

San Sebastian, Vd. 1 ; 333. 

Santa Ana, Ct. 1 ; 425. 

Santa Ana, Mq. 5; 2153. 

Santa Ana, Sm. 3 ; 708. 

Santa Ana, Vz. 3 ; 2153. 

Santa Barbara, An. 6 ; 2225. 

Santa Catalina, Ct. 1 ; 902. 

Santafe, B. 1, is Bogota. 

Santafe, I. 10; 1076. 

Santa Librada, Nv. 5 ; 2265. 

Santa Maria, I. 8 ; 2120. 

Santa Maria, I. 6 ; 145. 

SANTAMAETA, Sm. ; 36,4S5. 

Santamabta, Sm. 1; 5774. 

Santamarta ** t, Sm. 1 ; 4340 ; 27 

Santander, Pp. 5; 19,789. 

Santa Eosa, An. 8 ; 32,S51. 

Santa Eosa * t, An. 8 ; 4990. 

Santa Eosa t, B 12 ; 2698. 

Santa Edsa, Ct. 1 ; 903. 

Santa Eosa, Td. ; 89,042. 



Santa Eosa * i, Td. ; 4934. 

Santiago, Ct. 5 ; 517. 

Santiago, Cs. 5; 203. 

Santiago, Pm. 9 ; 1249. 

Santiago, I. 10; 33,864. 

Santiago * t, 1. 10 ; 6121. 

Santo Domingo, An. 1 ; 2235. 

Santo Tomas, Sb. 3 ; 2404. 

Santos, I. 11; 17,550. 

Santos * t, I. 11 ; 6223. 

Santos, Pm. 7 ; 2004. 

Santuario, B. 6; 135 

Santuario, An. 4; 2706. 

San Vicente, An. 6 ; 5369. 

San Vicente, Sc. 7 ; 88. 

San Zenon, Sm. 3 ; 813. 

Sapo, Ct.; 53 

Sapuyes, Ps. 5 ; 1493. 

Sajandi, E., Ps. ; Patia, E I. 

Sarabita, E, Vz., is the Fuquene. 

Sarare, E., Cs. ; Apiire, E. r. 

Sardinata, E., Pm. ; Zulia, E. I. 

Sargento, A, B. 8; 103 

Saria, E., Ch. ; Pacific. 

Sartinajal, hacienda, Cc. 7; 461 

Sasaima, B. 8 ; 2255. 

Sativa-norte * t, Td. ; 4240. 

Sativa-sur, Td. ; 1048. 

Saifa, E., Pp. 4; Pacific. 

Seco, E, B. 8; Magdalena, & r. ; 342 

Sedros, E. Ps. 2; Pacific. 

Serinza, Td. 1; 2766. 

Serrezuela, B. 6 ; 1094 ; 133 

Serviez, B. 11 ; 238. 

Servita, Pm. 3; 596. 

Sesquile, B. 9 ; 2775. 

Siachoque, Tj. 1 ; 3001. 

Sierra, Pp. 1 ; 2643. 

Silos, Pm. 1 ; 2514. 

Silvia, Pp. 1 ; 3728. 

Simacota, Sc. 1 ; 7022. 

Simancas, Oc. 1. 

Simana, Oc. 1 ; 684. 

Simijaca, B. 13 ; 8828. 

Simijaca, E., Vz., is the Fuquene. 

Simitarra, E, Mp. ; Magdalena, E. I. 

Simiti, Mp. 4 ; 4437. 

Simiti* t, Mp. 4; 1980. 

Since, Ct. 4; 4054. 

Sinoelejo, Ct. 9 ; 15,148. 

Sincelejo * t, Ct. 9 ; 6046. 

Sipi, Ch. 2; 2021. 

Siquima, B. 5 ; 2006. 

Site, Vz. 1, is Cite. 

Sitio nuevo, Sm. 4; 2501. 

Soacha, B. 1; 2918; 273 

Soata, Td. 4; 22,374. 

Soata**, Td. 4; 9015. 

Socha, Td. 3 ; 2S66. 

SOCOEEO, Sc. ; 157, 0S5; 845 

Socoeeo, Sc. 1 ; 41,761. 

Socorro ** i, Sc. 1 ; 15,015. 

Socota, Td. 3 ; 5306. 

Sogamoso, Td. 5 ; 42,854. 

Sogamoso * t, Td. 5 ; 6369. 

Sogamoso, E., Sc. ; Magdalena, E. r. 

Solano, E., Ch. ; Pacific. 

Soldddo, Eh. 1; 210. 

Soldano, E, Mq. and Nv. ; Magdalena, E I. 

Soleddd, An. 2; 398. 

Soledad, Sb. 3 ; 10,456. 

Soledad * t, Sb. 3 ; 3992. 

Solimoes, E., is the Amazon. 

Somondoco, Tj. 3 ; 5270. 

Sona, I. 10; 2652. 

Sonson * t, An. 7 ; 10,244. 

Sopetean, An. 9 ; 17,763. 

Sopetran * f, An. 9; 4573. 

Sopo, B. 3 ; 2531. 

Sdra, Tj. 1 ; 899. 



APPENDIX. 



583 



Soraca, Tj. 1 ; 2275. 

Sotaquira, Tj. 1 ; 5218. 

Soto, I. 12 ; 15,569. 

Suaita t, Sc. 5 ; 4993. 

Suarez, E., is the Fuquene. 

Suaza, R., Nv. ; Magdalena, E. T. 

Suba, B. 1 ; 1072 ; 

Subachoque, B. 6 ; S14S. 

Sucio, R., Ch. ; Atrato, E. /. 

Sucre, Mp. 2 ; 1805. 

Suesca, B. 4 ; 3389. 

Suganiuxi, Td., is Sogamdso. 

Sumapaz, P., B. ; 

Sumapaz, E., B. ; Magdalena, E. r. ; 

SupIa, Cc. 5; 8434. 

Supia*t,Cc. 5; 2771. 

Supia, E., Cc. ; Cauea, E I. 

Suratat, Pm. 2; 2010. 

Susa, B. 13; 3754 

Susacon, Td. 4 ; 2875. 

Suta, B. 18 ; 2936. 

Suta, Tj. 4; 3172. 

Sutatensa, Tj. 3 ; 5022. 



242 



316 
316 



242 



499 



Tabio, B. 3; 258S; 

Tablas, I. 11 ; 6209. 

Tablazo, Eh. 2 ; 718. 

Tablazo, hill, Cc. 7 ; 

Tablon, Ps. 1 ; 2247. 

Taboga, I. 13 ; 3353. 

Taboga, I. 13 ; 789. 

Tacaloa i, Ct. 4; 282. 

Tacamocho, Ct. 2; 543. 

Tacasaluma, Mp. 2; 429. 

Tachira, E., Pm. ; Zulia, E. r. 

Tado, Ch. 2 ; 6388. 

Taganga, Sm. 1 ; 177. 

Taguana, Cs. 5; 2329. 

Tagudna, Cs. 5; 205. 

Talaigua, Mp. 1; 774. 

Tamalameque, Oc. 1 ; 726 ; 

Tamana, B., Ch. 2; San Juan, E. I 

Tamandi, R, Bv. ; Cauca, E. I. 

Tamara, Cs. 1 ; 1880. 

Tambo, Ps. 1 ; 2110. 

Tambo, Pp. 1 ; 3426. 

Tame, Cs. 3 ; 633. 

Taminango, Ps. 1 ; 3428. 

Tammez, Cas. (Tunebo Indians). 

Tapias, Mq. 1 ; 

Tasco, Td. 5; 2675. 

Tauza, B. 18; 1615. 

Telembi, E., Ps. ; Patia, E. I. 

Ten, Cs. 1 ; 452. 

Tena, B. 10 ; 1386 ; 

Teneeefe, Sm. 5; 9032. 

Tenerife, Sm. 5 ; 2011. 

Tenjo, B. 6 ; 4016. 

Tenza, Tj. 2 ; 6812. 

Teorama, Oc. ; 1365. 

Tequendama (Falls), B. ; 274, /. 2S1 

Tequendama, hacienda, B. ; 273 

Tequia, Pm. 6 ; 2S66. 

Ternera, Ct. 1 ; 47 

Tesca, lagoon, Ct. 1 ; 46 

Tetdn, Ct. 2 ; 567. 

Tibacui, B. 7; 575; 301 

Tibacui, Mt., B. 7; 817 

Tibana, Tj. 6 ; 6250. 

Tibana, E, Tj., is the Boyaca. 

Tibasosa, Td. 5 ; 3093. 

Tibirita, B. 4 ; 8637. 

Tiemble-cul, hill, Cc. 7 ; 498 

Tierra Bomba, island, Ct. 1 ; 42 

Timana, Nv. 5; 19,694. 

Timand, Nv. 5; 3448. 

Timbio, Pp. 1 ; 4624. 

Timbio, E., Pp. ; Patia, E. I. 

Timbiqui, Pp. 4 ; 2178. 

Tinjaca, Tj. 4; 3002. 



513 



356 



353 



Titiribi, An. 2 ; 4598. 

Toca, Tj. 1 ; 2467. 

Tocaima, B. 12; 20,666. 

Tocaima*t, B. 12; 6574; 

Tocancipa, B. 3 ; 1816. 

Toche, Mq. 1 ; 

Tdche, E., Mq., is the Coello, E. 

Tochecito, E., Mq. ; Coello, E. r. ; 

Togui, Vz. 3 ; 1882. 

Tole, I. 10 ; 1138. 

Toledo, Pm. 1 ; 1408. 

Tolima, Mq. 1 ; 

Tolima, Mt., Mq. ; 

Tolu, Ct. 9 ; 2054. 

Tolu-viejo, Ct. 9 ; 1093. 

Tomarrazdn, Eh. 1 ; 820. 

Tomo, E., Cs. ; Orinoco, R. I. 

Tona, Pm. 2; 1062. 

T6paga, Td. 5 ; 1446. 

Topaipi, B. 14; 1395. 

Toribio, Pp. 5; 1077. 

Toeo, Cc. 6 ; 7203. 

Tdro * t, Cc. 6 ; 4314. 

Tdta, Td. 5; 3747. 

Tota, L., Td. ; 

Tranqullkts, I. 10 ; 368. 

Trapiche, Pp. 2 ; 3542. 

Tratino, R., Tj., is the Boyaca. 

Trigo, A., B. 8; 

Trinidad, Cs. 1 ; 111. 

Trinidad, I. 7; 4092. 

Trompitas, T. 6, is Turmequ6. 

Truando, R., Ch. 1 ; Atrato, R. I. 

Tua, R., Cs. ; Meta, R. I. 

Tubara, Sb. 1 ; 1880. 

Tucuti, I. 6 ; 106. 

Tuira, R., I. ; Sabana, R. I. 

Thuja, Cc. 7; 6450. 

Tulua*t, Cc. 7; 4352; 

Tulua, R., Cc. 7 ; Cauca, R. r.; 

Tumaoo, Ps. 4; 2973. 

Tumaco * t, Ps. 4 ; 2500. 

TUNDAMA, Td. ; 152,758. 

Tunia, Pp. 1 ; 2927. 

TUNJA, Tj. ; 162,959. 

Tunja, Tj. 1 ; 43,334. 

Tunja ** t, Tj. 1 ; 5022. 

Tuparo, R., Cs. ; Orinoco, B. I. 

Tupes, Vd. 1 ; 446. 

Tuqtjeeees, Ps. 5; 20,784. 

Tiiquerres * t, Ps. 5; 6104. 

Turbaco, Ct. 1; 1284; 

Turbana, Ct. 1 ; 567. 

Turbo, Ch. 1; 916. 

Turmequ6 * t, Tj. 6 ; 7197. 

Tuta, Tj. 1 ; 3168. 

Tutaza, Td. 1 ; 533. 

Ubala, B. 9 ; 1466. 
Ubaque, B. 2 ; 3399 ; 
Ubate, B. 13 ; 38,2S6. 
Ubate * t, B. 13 ; 6754 
Ullucos, E., Nv. ; Paez, E. r. 
Umbita, Tj. 6; 3545. 
Una, E., Sn. ; Guaviare, E. I. 
Une, B. 2; 2326; 
Union, Nv. 1 ; 1702. 
Una-gato, Cc. 3; 
Upia, E., Cs. ; Meta, E. I. ; 
Upia, B. 11 ; 246. 
Ure, Ct. 5; 585. 
Urrao t, An. 3 ; 2204 
Urumlta, Rh. 2; 450. 
Usaquen, B. 1 ; 2793. 
Usiacuri, Sb. 2 ; 1406. 
Usme, B. 1 ; 1932. 
Uvita, Td. 4 ; 3S67. 

Vahos, An. 6 ; 3034. 
Valencia, Vd. 1 ; 640. 



343 



860 



836 
215, 336 



235 



117 



499 
491 



47 



254 



413 
285 



584 



APPENDIX. 



Valle, Mq. 1 ; 2601. 

Valle, So. 6; 4006. 

Valle, Vz. 1; 10,544; 

Valle de Jesus, Vz. 1, is Valle. 

VALLE DUPAR, Vd. ; 14,032. 

Valle Dupar, Vd. 1 ; 7629. 

Valle Dupar ** t, Vd. 1 ; 29T0. 

Val-paraiso, hacienda, Cc. 1 ; 

Vega, B. 5 ; 3521. 

Vega, Pp. 2; 14T8. 

Vega, hacienda, Bv. 3, is fictitious. 

VELEZ, Vz. ; 109,421. 

Vblez, Vz. 1; 64,024; 

Velez ** t, Vz. 1 ; 11,178. 

Venadillo, Mq. 2 ; 3136. 

Venddos, Vd. 1 ; 179. 

Ventaquemada, Tj. 6 ; 4393. 

Vergara, B. 8; 1968. 

Vetas, Pm. 2; 616. 

Vetllla, An. 5; 630. 

Vichada, R., Cs. ; Orinoco, R. I. 

Victoria, Cc. 8 ; 1813 ; 

Victoria, Mq. 5 ; 298. 

Vieja, R., Co.; Cauca, R. r. ; 

Vijes, Bv. 1; 1160; 

Vijes, R., Bv. 1; Cauca, R. Z.; 

Villa-nueva, Ct. 1 ; 1323. 

Villa-nueva, Rh. 2; 999. 

Villa-vicencio t, B. 11 ; 341. 

Villa-vieja f, Nv. 1 ; 4289. 

Villeta t, B. 8 ; 5417 ; 

Vinagre, R., Pp. 1 ; Cauca, R. r. ; 

Viota, B. 12; 467. 

Viracacha, Tj. 6; 223L 

Volador, Mt., B. 12; 



513 



400 
513 



375 

18, 526 
18 



121 
19 



Volcan, R., An. ; Magdalena, R. Z. 
Volcancito, Tamho, Mq. 1 ; 
Vuelta, B. 8; 

Yacopi, B. 14; 1777. 
Yacuanquer, Ps. 1; 3219. 
Yaguara t, Nv. 2 ; 3538. 
Yarumal, An. 8 ; 3561. 
Yascual, Ps. 5; 1209. 
Yati, Mp. 2 ; 547. 
Yavisa*, I. 6; 287. 
Yerbabuena, Tamho, Mq. 1; 
Yesal, Cc. 7 ; 
Yolombo, An. 5; 786. 
Yotdeo, Bv. 1 ; 1334. 
Yucal, Ct. 7; 495. 
Yumbo, Bv. 1 ; 1374 ; 
Yurbaco, now Turbaco, Ct. 
Yurmangui, Pp. 4; 2098. 

Zapatoca, Sc. 7; 9112. 
Zapatoca * t, Sc. 7 ; 7133. 
Zapatosa * +, Cs. 5 ; 606. 
Zaragoza t, An. 5 ; 1343. 
Zaragdza, village, Cc. 3; 
Zaragoza, hacienda, B. 10 ; 
Zarzal, Cc. 3, is Libraida. 
Zea, An. 8 ; 1152. 
Zetaquira, Tj. 5; 1466. 
Zinu, R., Ch. ; Caribbean Sea. 
Zipaquira is Cipaquira. 
Zonza, Cc. 1 ; 

Zonza, R., Cc. 1 ; Cauca, R. r. ; 
Zulia, R., Sd. ; Lake Maracaibo. 



368 
91 



368 
498 



524 



388 
351 



505 
505 



V. MAIL EOUTES. 

The following table gives the mail routes of New Granada as fixed by the de- 
cree of November 19, 1853. The distances are given in miles, together with 
the time allotted, both going and returning. 



I. Bogota to the Atlantic. 

1. Bogota to Hours. 

Facatativa 9 go' 

Villeta 6 .. 

Guaduas 5 .. 

Honda 6 

Nare 13 .. 

Boca del Carare ....... 11 

Barranca-bermeja 5 . . 

Puerto Nacional 17 

Banco 14 . . 

Mompos 11 

Plato 9 .. 

Calamar 10 . . 

San Antonio 1 . . 

llemolino (Sm.) 6 .. 

i-oledad 5 . . 

liarranquilla 1 . . 

Sabanilla 3 . . 

2. Remolino to 

Cienega 10 . . 

Santa Marta 5 

Riohacha 40 

3. Calamar to 

Mahates 10 . 

Cartagena 12 . 

4. Banco to 

Chiriguana 26 

Valle Dupar 39 . 

Cesar 16 . 

Riohacha 32 . 



Hours. 


Miles. 


g. 10 ret' z;. 2S.0 


.. 9 ... 


18.6 


.. 5 .... 


15.5 


.. 5 ... 


15.5 


.. 29 ... 


82.8 


. . 26 ... 


71.5 


.. 11 ... 


28.0 


.. 35 ... 


97.9 


.. 22 ... 


59.0 


.. 22 ... 


59.0 


. . 17 . . . 


43.5 


. . 20 ... 


54.4 


.. 2 ... 


4.7 


. . 10 ... 


28.3 


.. 6 ... 


17.1 


.. 3 ... 


4.7 


.. 4 ... 


7.8 


. , 10 . . . 


59.0 


.. 5 ... 


20.2 


.. 40 ... 


102.5 


. . 10 ... 


31.1 


. . 11 ... 


. 34.2 


.. 26 ... 


59.0 


.. 39 ... 


87.0 


.. 16 ... 


. 37.3 


.. 32 ... 


. 87.0 



II. Bogota to Puerto Nacional. 

5. Bogotd to Hours. ' 

Cipiquira 11 go' 

Ubate 10 .. 

Chiquinquira 11 

Puente Nacional 9 .. 

Velez 5 .. 

Suaita 6 

Oiba 7 .. 

Socorro 6 

San-jil 4 . . 

Aratoca 5 

Piedecuesta 11 

Jiron 4 

Bucaramanga 3 

Surata 10 

Ocafia 37 

Puerto Nacional 14 

6. Socorro to 

Barichara 6 

Zapatosa 8 . . 

Barranca-bermeja 32 .... 32 

7. Velez to 

Puerto del Carare 26 . 

Boca del Carare 25 . 

III. Bogota to Venezuela, 

8. Bogota to 

Choconta 19 

Turmeque 9 

Tunja 7 

Santa Rosa 13 14 



Hours. 


Miles. 


g. 9 ret 


g. 31.1 


.. 9 .. 


. 26.4 


.. 9 .. 


. 24.9 


.. 8 .. 


. 24.9 


.. 4 .. 


. 12.4 


.. 6 .. 


. 18.6 


.. 6 .. 


. 18.6 


.. 6 .. 


. 17.1 


.. 4 .. 


. 12.4 


.. 5 .. 


. 15.5 


.. 10 .. 


. 28.5 


.. 4 .. 


. 12.4 


.. 3 .. 


. 9.3 


.. 10 .. 


. 28.0 


.. 37 .. 


. 97.9 


.. 14 .. 


. 40.4 


.. 6 .. 


. 15.5 


.. S .. 


. 17.1 


.. 32 .. 


. 83.9 


. . 35 . . 


. 52.8 


.. 29 .. 


. 52. S 


.. 22 .. 


. 59.0 


.. 9 .. 


. 24.9 


.. 8 .. 


. 21.7 



APPENDIX. 



585 



Hours. Hours, 

Sativa-norte 11 12 . 

Soata .' 7 .... 7 . 

Concepcion 15 .... 20 . 

Pamplona 25 23 

SanJoso 20 22 , 

Rosario 2 .... 2 , 

Tachira (Venezuela) ... 1 . . . . 1 

9. Tunja to 

Sogamoso 13 .... 13 

Lobranza-grande 19 .... 19 , 

Moreno 25 25 , 

Arauca 42 42 . 

IV. Bogota to Ecuador 

10. Bogota to 

Mesa 16 .... 18 

Tocaima 8 . . . . 9 

Santa Rosa 11 .... 13 

Prado 5 . 

Villa-vieja 13 12 

Neiva 7 8 

Yaguara 8 .... 10 

Carnicerias 10 .... 10 

Paicol S .... 8 

Plata 4 5 . . 

Popayan 43 .... 4T 

Pasto 71 69 

Tuquerres 13 .... 13 

Ipiales S .... 9 

Tulcan (Ecuador) 4 4 . . 

V. Bogota to the Pacific. 

11. Bogota to 

Mesa 16 18 

Tocaima 8 .... 8 .. 

Piedras 10 10 .. 

Ibague 9 .... 9 .. 

Cartago 47 42 .. 

Tulua 16 .... 16 .. 

Buga 4 . . . . 4 . . 

Palmira 9 9 . . 

Cali 7 .... 6 . . 

Buenaventura 26 .... 26 

VI. Western Local Waters 

12. Cartagena to 

Mahates 12 12 

Carmen 5 .... 5 .. 

Corozal 8 . . . . 8 . . 

Sincelejo 4 .... 8 .. 

Chinu 13 .... 13 .. 

Lorica 17 17 .. 

13. Chink to 
Cienega-de-oro 10 .... 12 

14. Cartagena to 

Sabanalarga 20 .... 20 .. 

Soledad S .. . 8 .. 

Barranquilla 1 1 .. 

Sabanilla 3 . . . . 3 . . 

15. Simitl to 
Puerto-nacional 13 13 

16. Medellin to 

Santa Rosa (An.) 17 .... 17 

Amalfi IS 18 .. 

Remedios 19 19 .. 

Zaragoza. 16 .... 17 .. 

Majagual 32 .... 73 . . 

Maganguu 19 .... 52 

Tacaloa S 16 .. 

Mompos 16 .... 4 

17. Nare to 

Remolino (An.) 8 3 . . 

Marinilla 27 28 

Rionegro 1 1 . . 



Miles. 
31.1 
18.6 
43.5 
62.1 
51.2 
6.2 
3.1 

37.3 
51.2 
63.7 
118.1 



85.7 
23.3 



20.2 

21.7 

24.9 

9.3 

9.3 

77.6 

189.8 

34.2 

24.9 

7.8 



35.7 
23.3 
31.1 
28.0 
87.0 
49.7 
12.4 
26.4 
IS. 6 
68.4 



34.2 



9.3 
34.2 
46.6 



55.9 
23.3 
4.7 
7.8 



37.3 
40.4 
43.5 
34.2 
111.8 
SO. 8 
24.9 
21.7 

12.4 

77.7 

3.1 



Hours. 

Medellin 7 . 

Sopetran 11 . 

Antioquia 8 . 

Urrao 17 . 

Bebara 31 . 

Quibdo 26 . 

18. Antioquia to 
Santa Rosa (An.) 16 . 

19. Medellin to 



tours. 


Miles. 


6 . 


. . 18.6 


11 . 


. . 28.5 


4 . 


.. 7.8 


17 . 


.. 40.4 


38 . 


. . 55.9 


26 . 


. . 62.2 



. 9 . 


. . 21.7 


. 25 . 


. . 52.8 


. 80 . 


. . 71.5 


3 


.. 7.8 


. 7 . 


. . 18.6 


. 9 . 


. . 24.9 


. 27 . 


. . 62.1 


. 9 . 


. . 24.9 


. 26 . 


. . 55.9 


g 


.. 7.8 


. 22 . 


. . 52.8 


. 52 . 


.. 124.3 


. 12 . 


. . 28.0 


. 6 . 


.. 14.0 


. 22 . 


. . 40.4 


. 11 . 


. . . 20.2 


. 14 . 


. . 43.5 


. 15 . 


.. 46.6 


. 16 . 


* 


. 28 . 


? 


. 50 . 


. .. 124.3 


. 6 . 


. .. 15.0 


. 28 . 


... 77.7 


. 52 . 


. . . 83.9 



20 



40.4 



Supia 25 

Anserma-nuevo 30 

Cartago 3 

Toro 7 .. 

Roldanillo 9 . . 

Cali 27 

Quilichao 9 .. 

Popayan 26 

20. Cartago to 

Anserma-nuevo 3 . . 

Novita 22 .. 

Quibdo 32 .. 

21. Rionegro to 

Abejorral 12 

Sonson 6 

Salamina 22 

Supia 11 

22. Honda to 

Ambalema 14 

Ibague 15 

Guamo 15 

Chaparral 28 

23. Buenaventura to 

Guapi 50 

Izcuande 6 

Barbacoas 35 . . 

Tiiquerres 52 

24 Baroacoas to 
Tumaco 20 . . 

25. Pasto to 
Mocoa 71 

26. Popayan to 
Almaguer 80 

27. Tocaima to 

Espinal 10 

Guamo 2 

Purificacion 6 

Natagaima 6 . . 

Villa Vieja 9 .. 

VII. Routes East of the Magpalena, be- 
ginning AT THE NOKTH. 

2S. Plata, Nv., to 

Pital 7 

Garzon 10 

Jigante 6 

Neiva IS 

29. Fusagasuga to 
Mesa 17 

30. Bogota to 
Fusagasuga 11 

31. Bogota to 

Funza 4 

Facatativa 5 

Ambalema 20 

32. Bogota to 

Caquesa 11 

Villavicencio 30 

San Martin 20 

33. Moreno, Cs., to 
Cafif i 24 



65.2 



.. 


. 31.1 


2 .. 


. 6.2 


6 .. 


. 18.6 


6 .. 


. 18.6 


9 .. 


. 28.0 



9 .. 


. 18.6 


10 .. 


. 21.7 


6 .. 


. 15.5 


IS .. 


. 52.8 



17 .. 



4 .. 

5 .. 

20 .. 

11 .. 
30 .. 

20 .. 

24 .. 



38.8 

24.9 

12.4 
15.5 
43.5 

24.9 

77.7 
52. S 

55.9 



586 



APPENDIX. 



34. Moreno, Cs., to Hours. 
13 .. 

35. Moreno, Cs., to 

Muneque 15 

Chita 4 . . 

Soata 21 .. 

36. Labranza-grande, Cs., 
Kecetor 18 . . 

3T. Cipaquird to 

Palma 19 

38. Cipaquird to 
Guatavita 11 

39. Cipaquird to 

Choconta 12 . . 

Guateque 8 . . 

40. Chocontd to 

Ubate 10 

Muzo 19 

41. Tunja to 

Garagoa 17 

Miraflores 10 

42. Tunja to 

Leiva 7 . . 

Moniquira 8 . . 

Puente Nacional 3 . . 

Velez 5 .. 



Hours. 
.. 13 ... 


Miles. 
87.3 


.. 15 ... 

.. 4 ... 
.. 21 ... 


. 37.3 
. 9.3 

. 45.0 


to 

.. 18 ... 


. 37.3 


. . 19 . . . 


. 49.7 


.. 11 ... 


. 34.2 


. 13 ... 

. 8 ... 


. 87.3 

. 249 


.. 10 ... 
. 19 . . . 


. 28.0 
. 55.9 


. 17 . . . 
. . 10 


. 46.6 
. 24.9 


. 7 ... 

■ s •■• 

8 . . . 
. 5 ... 


. 18.6 
. 21.7 
. 9.8 
. 12.4 



48. SogarnosO,Td.,tOKm Hours. Miles. 

Rosa, Td 7 7 18.6 

Charala 16 16 45.0 

Socorro 7 8 20.2 

44. Soatd to 

Cocui 13 .... 13 .... 24.9 

45. Concepcion to 

Malaga 2 2 6.2 

San Andres 10 10 24.9 

46. Pamplona to 

Bucaramanga 24 27 71.5 

47. Zapatoca to 

Jiron 11 11 28.0 

48. Ocana to 

Salazar 32 32 71.5 

San Jose (Sd.) 12 12 28.0 

VIII. Isthmus Koutes. 
These are nnder the control of the Estado de 
Panamfi. It is intended that each distrito shall 
have a post-office, but all is, as yet, unsettled. 
The principal offices are to he at the following 
places. The, distances of each of these from 
Panama is annexed. 

Panamd 0. 

Colon 47.5 

Nata 99.4 

Pese 149.1 

142.8 

155.8 

David 310.7 




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588 APPENDIX. 



VH. ALTITUDES, CLIMATES, AND PBODUCTIONS. 

On the opposite page, the space from the top to the bottom represents the three 
miles of altitude that separate the limit of perpetual snow in the tropics from the 
level of the sea. The left-hand margin is occupied with names of places ranged 
at their respective altitudes. All, except four in Italics, are in New Granada. 
Next is a scale of English feet. The second scale is of mean annual tempera- 
tures, disposed in equal parts, and increasing downward. Between these scales 
lines connect the altitudes of the places named with their annual temperatures, 
which vary greatly from an exact correspondence. The third scale is of En- 
glish miles, and the fourth the boiling-point of water at the different altitudes. 

The remainder is divided into four belts of vegetation, in which lines indicate 
the limits of spontaneous growth or profitable cultivation of various important 
plants. 

It would appear, from an inspection of this, that Bogota has an altitude of a lit- 
tle more than 8650 feet, and a mean temperature considerably higher than might 
be expected, 58°. It is seen to be less than If miles above the sea, and that 
boiling water should have there the temperature of nearly 195°. It should be 
too cold for cotton, cane, pine-apples, or rice, while potatoes, barley, and cin- 
chona would flourish. 

It is much to be regretted that this table, which has cost so much to prepare, 
can not be made more reliable. The range of temperature which plants are ca- 
pable of enduring is drawn chiefly from Boussingault and Humboldt. I have 
not often ventured to correct the inaccuracies I think I see in them, except when 
they conflict with each other ; but such general statements must necessarily be 
but approximate ; and a moderate degree of accuracy can be attained only by 
special observations made for this purpose. There must be great errors in the 
mean annual temperatures of different places, especially those in elevated re- 
gions, where observations have been made chiefly by day. With all this, I trust 
no man can look on it without acquiring new and more accurate ideas of the 
tropics. 

In the accompanying map, the attempt is made to exhibit the extent of these 
climates, and to show Avhat part of the surface of New Granada is occupied by 
each. To do this minutely in so steep and broken a country would require 
maps on the largest scale, and the materials for them are yet to be collected. 
Small as is the scale on which the attempt is here made, numerous as must be 
the errors that cover it, it can not but be of much utility in conveying general 
ideas. It claims the indulgence to which all first attempts are justly entitled. 

The following tables of thermometrical observations have their chief interest 
from the fact that no published series is known to exist that were made in a sim- 
ilar location. They are from the Valley of the Cauca, and mostly made at an 
elevation of about 3500 feet. It is difficult to obtain suitable stations for max- 
imum observations, where the instrument can be accessible and safe, in such a 
country. Mine, unfortunately, was broken before comparing it with any relia- 
ble standard. If the morning observations be found too low, and those of the 
warmest part of the day too high, I shall not be surprised. One A.M. observa- 
tion and two P.M. were attempted, and the state of the sky noted at each time. 
F. signifies_/cKr, S. sun, and B. rain. Eor the place of the observations where 
the date is marked with an asterisk, see Appendix VHI. All the others are at 
La Paila, Cauca. 



590 



APPENDIX. 



THERMOMETEK FOR MAY, JUNE, JULY, AUGUST, 1853. 





Morning. 


Noon. 


Night. 




Hour. 





Sky. 


Hour. 


° 


Sky. 


Hour. 


° 


Sky. 


May 1 


7 


73 


c. 


2 


76 


R. 


6 


71 


c. 


2 


7 


67 


c. 


3 


79 


— 


6 


74 


F. 


3 


6 


67 


F. 


3 


77 


R. 


7 


71 


R. 


4 


6 


66 


F. 


2 


79 


C. 


9 


69 


F. 


5 


7 


68 


S. 


4 


72 


C. 


7 


70 


R. 


6 


6 


65 


c. 


3 


73 


R. 


6 


69 


C. 


7 


6 


64 


s. 


2 


77 


S. 


6 


73 


F. 


8 


8 


67 


c. 


3 


75 


s. 


6 


74 


F. 


9 


6 


64 


F. 


3 


79 


s. 


6 


75 


F. 


10 


6 


66 


F. 


3 


74 


c. 


6 


70 


C. 


11 


6 


64 


C. 


3 


75 


s. 


6 


73 


F. 


12 


6 


66 


c. 


3 


76 


c. 


6 


69 


R. 


13 


6 


64 


c. 


3 


77 


s. 


6 


71 


F. 


14 


6 


62 


c. 


3 


80 


s. 


6 


76 


F. 


15 


7 


67 


s. 


3 


81 


s. 


6 


74 


R. 


16 


6 


67 


R. 


3 


71 


R. 


8 


68 


C. 


17 


6 


63 


C. 


3 


76 


C. 


6 


74 


C. 


18 


7 


68 


c. 


3 


72 


C. 


6 


71 


c. 


19 


6 


63 


c. 


3 


79 


s. 


6 


75 


F. 


20 


6 


66 


c. 


4 


79 


s. 


7 


72 


R. 


21 


6 


67 


c. 


4 


70 


R. 


7 


68 


R. 


22 


7 


66 


c. 


3 


78 


F. 


- 7 


71 


C. 


23 


6 


66 


R. 


3 


72 


R. 


6 


67 


R. 


24 


6 


64 


s. 


3 


76 


S. 


6 


71 


C. 


25 


7 


65 


c. 


2 


73 


c. 


6 


68 


R. 


26 


6 


64 


c. 


4 


75 


s. 


6 


72 


C. 


27 


6 


64 


s. 


3 


78 


s. 


6 


74 


C. 


28 


6 


65 


c. 


4 


78 


c. 


6 


71 


R. 


29 


6 


68 


c. 


3 


77 


s. 


7 


70 


F. 


30 


6 


67 


F. 


4 


77 


c. 


6 


75 


R. 


31 


6 


66 


s. 


3 


74 


R. 


6 


71 


C. 


June 1 


7 


67 


c. 


4 


79 


s. 


7 


70 


R. 


2 


7 


66 


c. 


3 


79 


s. 


7 


73 


F. 


3 


7 


67 


c. 


3 


79 


s. 


6 


77 


F. 


4 








3 


79 


F. 


6 


77 


F. 


5 


8 


72 


s. 






s. 


6 


80 


F. 


6 


6 


62 


s. 


3 


86 


s. 


6 


73 


F. 


7 


6 


63 


F. 


4 


79 


s. 


6 


76 


F. 


8 


6 


63 


F. 


4 


79 


c. 


6 


75 


C. 


9 


6 


66 


S. 


3 


80 


s. 


6 


72 


R. 


10 


6 


68 


c. 


12 


76 


s. 


6 


76 


F. 


11 


6 


65 


c. 


4 


82 


s. 


6 


76 


C. 


12 


6 


64 


c. 


4 


82 


s. 


6 


74 


F. 


13 


6 


66 


c. 


4 


82 


s. 


6 


77 


C. 


14 


4 


66 


F. 


3 


75 


s. 


6 


76 


C. 


15 








4 


82 


s. 


6 


74 


c. 


16 


6 


61 


F. 


4 


79 


s. 


10 


67 


F. 


17 


6 


63 


F. 


3 


80 


s. 


10 


68 


F. 


18 


6 


66 


C. 


3 


83 


s. 


10 


68 


F. 


19 


7 


68 


s. 


5 


78 


c. 


9 


71 


R. 


20 


6 


66 


c. 


4 


77 


c. 


10 


69 


F. 


21 


6 


66 


F. 


4 


80 


c. 


10 


70 


R. 


22 


7 


69 


c. 


3 


76 


c. 








23 








4 


81 


s. 


9 


67 


F. 


24 


6 


64 


c. 


4 


80 


s. 


10 


69 


F. 


25 


7 


65 


s. 


4 


78 


c. 


11 


68 


C. 


26 


7 


66 


c. 


4 


79 


s. 


10 


64 


F. 


27 


7 


61 


s. 


4 


84 


s. 


10 


67 


F. 









APPENDIX. 








591 




Morning. 


Noon. 


Night. 




Hour. 





Sky. 


Hour. 


o 


Sky. 


Hour. 


° 


Sky. 


June 28* 


6 


61 


F. 


4 


82 


s. 


10 


66 


F. 


29* 


6 


65 


F. 






s. 


10 


71 


F- 


30 


7 


G6 


F. 


5 


80 


s. 


9 


71 


C. 


July 1 


6 


64 


C. 


4 


80 


c. 


10 


66 


F. 


2 


6 


61 


C. 


4 


84 


s. 


10 


69 


F. 


3 


6 


65 


F. 


4 


82 


s. 


9 


71 


F. 


4 


6 


65 


F. 


3 


82 


s. 


9 


68 


F. 


5 


6 


61 


F. 


3 


84 


s. 


10 


70 


C. 


6 


6 


67 


C. 


3 


71 


c. 


10 


67 


R. 


7 


6 


66 


F. 


3 


80 


s. 


10 


68 


F. 


8 


6 


62 


F. 


4 


80 


s. 


10 


68 


C. 


9 


6 


62 


F. 


4 


74 


c. 


10 


66 


F. 


10 


6 


62 


C. 


4 


78 


s. 


10 


67 


F. 


11 


6 


62 


C. 


2 


80 


s. 


10 


67 


F. 


12 


6 


60 


C. 


3 


78 


c. 


10 


70 


C. 


13 


7 


62 


c. 


3 


81 


s. 


11 


67 


F. 


14 


6 


59 


s. 


3 


82 


s. 


9 


66 


F. 


15 


6 


62 


c. 














16 








4 


80 


s. 


11 


70 


F. 


17 


9 


72 


s. 


4 


79 


c. 


9 


69 


C. 


18 


6 


66 


c. 


3 


76 


R. 


10 


67 


c. 


19* 


6 


66 


R. 


2 


78 


s. 


9 


68 


F. 


20* 


6 


64 


s. 


3 


80 


s. 


9 


68 


F. 


21* 


6 


62 


s. 


3 


80 


s. 


9 


69 


F. 


22* 


6 


64 


s. 


12 


81 


s. 








23* 


7 


71 


c. 


3 


78 


c. 


10 


72 


C. 


24* 


7 


67 


c. 






s. 


10 


70 


c. 


25* 


6 


68 


F. 








10 


71 


F. 


26* 


6 


68 


R. 








9 


72 


F. 


27* 


6 


71 


F. 


4 


78 


s. 


9 


71 


F. 


28* 


6 


70 


F. 


3 


70 


s. 


10 


60 


C. 


29* 


6 


58 


C. 


3 


65 


c. 


10 


60 


F. 


30* 


6 


56 


F. 


2 


72 


c. 


10 


70 


F. 


31* 


6 


68 


R. 


3 


78 


c. 


10 


69 


F. 


Aug. 1* 


6 


68 


F. 








10 


70 


F. 


2* 


6 


67 


C. 


3 


73 


c. 


10 


71 


C. 


3* 


6 


65 


C. 


3 


78 


s. 


11 


69 


F. 


4* 


6 


69 


F. 


3 


74 


c. 


11 


68 


C. 


5* 


6 


66 


F. 


3 


73 


c. 


9 


68 


F. 


6* 


6 


65 


S. 


3 


66 


s. 


9 


56 


F. 


7* 


6 


56 


c. 


3 


66 


s. 


10 


56 


F. 


8* 


6 


52 


F. 


4 


71 


s. 


9 


58 


C. 


9* 


6 


58 


C. 


3 




s. 


9 


58 


C. 


10* 


6 


55 


C. 


3 


79 


s. 


9 


70 


F. 


11* 


6 


65 


C. 


3 


75 


c. 


9 


70 


F. 


12* 


6 


66 


F. 


3 


79 


s. 


9 


72 


F. 


13* 


6 


66 


F. 


4 


75 


c. 


9 


70 


F. 


14* 


7 


66 


C. 


3 


76 


s. 


9 


70 


F. 


15* 


6 


68 


c. 






s. 






F. 


16* 


6 


62 


c. 


3 


80 


c. 








17* 














10 


69 


F. 


18* 


6 


61 


F. 


3 


82 


s. 


9 


70 


F. 


19* 


6 


68 


F. 


3 


84 


s. 








20* 


6 


69 


F. 


3 


82 


c. 


9 


70 


F. 


21 


6 


66 


C. 


3 


82 


c. 


9 


69 


R. 


22 


6 


66 


C. 


4 


83 


s. 


10 


71 


F. 


23 


6 


64 


F. 


3 


80 


s. 


10 


70 


C. 



The following special observations are of interest : May 12, 3 P.M., 76°, C. ; 4.15 P.M., 70°, R. 

May 23, 6 P.M., 67°, K.— May 24, 1 A.M., 63°, C. ; 6 A.M. 64°, C— June 24, 1 P.M., 124° inthe sun. 
* All but these were made at La Paila. 



592 



APPENDIX. 



Vni. ITINERARY. 

Names in Italics indicate visits to places, and a return that same day to the 
last place mentioned in Small Capitals. 



1852. — August. 

21. Off Sierra Nevada. 

22. Off Santa Marta. 
Harbor of Sabanilla. 

23. Sabanilla. Custom-house. 
24 Barranquilla. 

25. Harbor of Sabanilla. 

28. Bongo in Cienega de Man- 
teca. 

29. Barranquilla. [la. 
81. Steam-boat in Barranquil- 

SEPTEMBEB, 

1. Bemolino. 

2. Calamar and above. 

3. Below Mompos. 

4. Mornpos. [co. 

5. Passed Margarita and Ban- 

6. Puerto-national. 

7. Below San Pablo. 

8. San Pablo, Bodega de So- 
gamoso. 

9. Passed Barranca-bermeja. 

10. Passed I. de Bionuevo and 
San Bartolome. 

11. Bemolino-grande, Nare. 

12. Aground above Nare. 
18. Champan above Nare. 

14. Below Buenavista. 

15. Passed Buenavista. 

16. Below Conejo. 

17. Passed Conejo. 

18. Vuelta, Honda. 

22. Pescaderias, Cruces, Sar- 
gento, Guaduas. 

27. Alto del Trigo, Cune, Alto 
del Petaquero, Villeta, Mau- 
ve, Salitre. 

28. Aserradero, Roble, Botello. 

29. Facatativa, Serrezuela, 
Santuario, Puente-grande, 
Fontibon, Bogota. 

October. 
5. Boqueron. 

7. Montserrate. 

13. Pena. 

15. Boqueron. 
18. Boqueron. 

28. Rio Arzobispo. 
27. Bio Fucha. 
2S. Cemetery. 

November. 

5. Boqueron. 

6. Rio Fucha. 

10. Guadalupe, Boqueron, 

16. Boqueron. 
18. Montserrate. 

22. Cemetery. 

23. Rio Arzobispo. 

25. Fucha. 

26. Pena, Upper Fucha. 

Decembee. 
f. Paramo of Andres Rosas. 

8. Boqueron. 

7. Soacha, Hacienda de Te- 
quendama. 

8-11. Salio de Tequendama, 
15. Cibate, Boca del Monte, Fu- 

8AGASUGA. 



16. Novillero. 

22. Pandi. 

23. FuSAGASUGA. 

25. Choclw. 

27. Retiro. 

28. Bogota. 

31. fusagasuga. 

1853 January. 

3. Clwcho. 

5. La Puerta. 

7. Chocho. 

11. La Puerta, Boqueron. 

12. Passed Melgar. 

13. Banks of Magdalena. 

14. Espinal, Banks of the Co- 
ello. 

15. Coello, Ibague\ 

24. Palmilla, Tapias. 

25. El Moral, Buenavista, 
Agua-caliente, Toehe. 

26. Gallego, Yerba-buena, Vol- 
cancito. 

27. Paramo of Quindio, Barci- 
nal, Boquia, El Boble. 

28. Portachuelo, Cailas, Balsa. 

29. Piedra de Moler, Cartago. 
31. Zaragosa, Hacienda de 

Sanchez. 

Febeuaby. 
1. Naranjo, Victoria, Las La- 
jas, Libraida, Las Cailas, El 
Medio, La Paila. 

4. Guavito. 
12. Guavito. 

17. Medio. 

21. Cora Perro. 

26. Medio. 

Maech. 

1. Murillo, Overo, Buga-la- 
grande, Tulua, San Pedro. 

2. Buga, Zonza, Cerrito, La 
Merced. 

3. San Marcos, Cali. 
10. Palmira. 

12. Buga. 

13. Paila. 

23. Libraida. 

Apeil. 
19. Medio. 
j0. Guavito. 

May. 
1. Foot of Cara Perro. 

14. Rio de Las Caiias. 

24. Near Cara Perro. 

June. 

4. Near Cara Perro. 

14. Roldanillo. 

15. Libraida, Paila. 

28. Lajas, Chaqueral. 

29. Libraida, Una-gato, Paila. 

July. 
4. Base of Cara Perro. 

8. Murillo. 

9. Paila. 

15. Lajas. 

16. Paila. 



19. Buga-la-grande. 

20. Cerrito. 

21. Cali. 

25. Vijes. 

26. Feeey. 
2S. Bolivia. 
30. Vijes. 

August. 

3. Cali. 

5. Arroyo-hondo. 

6. Bolivia. 
10. Vijes. 

12. Espinal. 

13. Vijes. 

15. Cerrito. 

18. Near Buga. [tas. 

19. San Pedro, Tulua, Sabale- 

20. Paila. 

25. Cara Perro. 

26. Cienega de Bwyo. 

29. Frisolar, Caracoli. 

September. 

7. La Cabana. 

8. Chaqueral. [elo. 

9. Libraida, Paila, Portachu- 

10. La Ribera. 

12. Picazo, Las Minas, Rio de 
San Marcos, Platanal. 

13. Tiemble Cul, Chorro. 

14. Las Playas. 

16. JlCARAMATA. 

17. Guavito. 

18. Chorro. 

19. La Ribeba. 

23. Yesal. 

26. Sartinajal, Portachuelo. 

27. Paila. 

30. Libkaida. 

OCTOBEE. 

4. Portachuelo. 

5. Murillo. 

6. Paila. 

11. Cienega de Burro. 
14. Las Cafias. 

17. Murillo. 

18. Paila. [bera. 

24. Murillo, Sabaletas, La Ri- 

25. Tulua, Tablazo, Ribera. 

28. Paila. 

31. Murillo. 

Novembeb. 
1. Paila. 

10. Murillo. 

Paila, Libraida, Cabana. 

11. Cartago, Victoria. 

22. Piedra de Moler, Capote. 

23. Balsa, Canas, Portachuelo. 

24. Roble, Boquia, Barcinal. 

25. Paramo, Volcancito, Galle- 

26. Toche, El Moral. [go. 

27. Ibague. 

Decembee. 
1. Tolima. 

6. Piedvas. 

7. Opia, Rio Seco, Neme. 

8. Tocaima, Juntas. 

9. Anapoima, Mesa. 
31. Tena, Zaragoza. 



APPENDIX. 



593 



14. San Antonio, Curcio, Te- 
quendama, Zaragoza. 

15. Tena, Mesa. 
17. Volcan. 

19. Tena, Barro Blanco, Haci- 
enda de Quito. 

20. Bogota. 

26. Hacienda de Tequendama. 

27. FrjBAGAStTGA. 

29, 30. Chocho. 

1854. — JANUARY. 

3. Cibate, Bogota. 
6. Egipto. 
14. Ghmdalupe, La Pena. 



17. Gruz-verde, Uhaqtte. 

18. ChoacKi, Thermal Spring, 
Lagwrm-grande. 

20. Cruz-verde, Bogota. 

Febeuaky. 
7. Montserrate. 
10. P&ramo of Choachi. 
25. Bio Arzobispo. 

March. 
7. CJiapinero. 

Apbil. 
24. Facatativa, Chimbe. 



25. Guaduas. [rias. 

26. Alto del Sarjento, Pescade- 

27. Honda. 

May. 
1. La Vuelta. 

3. Nave. 

4. San Pedro. 

5. Puerto-nacional. 

6. Mompos. 

7. Calamar. 

8. Mahates, Arjona. 

9. Turbaeo, Cartagena. 

10. San Luzaro. 

11. Boca Ghiea,Caribbean Sea. 



IX. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 

The figures in parentheses refer to pages in this work where the events are 
referred to. 



1492. New World discovered by Columbus, 
October 11. 

1497. Continent discovered by Cabot, June 4. 

1502. New Granada discovered by Columbus, 
December 14. 

1504. Queen Isabel died, November 26. 

1506. Death of Columbus, May 20. 

1510. First settlement by Nicuesa at Madre de 
Dios. 
Turbaeo plundered by Ojeda. 

1513. The Pacific discovered by Balboa, Sep- 
tember 25. 

1516. Fernando V. died, January 22. 

1519. Panama founded by Arias Davila. 

1524. Peru invaded from Panama by Pizarro. 

1525. Santamarta founded by Bastidas, July 29. 
1533. Cartagena founded by Heredia, Jan. 15. 

1536. Quesada sets out from Santamarta, April 

6 (202). 
Popayan and Cali founded by Benalcazar. 

1537. Quesada enters the Plain of Bogota, 

March (202). 

1538. Bogota founded by Quesada, August 6. 
Zaquesazipe murdered (24S). 

1539. Tunja, Velez, and Mompos founded. 
1544. Cartagena taken by Baal, July 27. 
1555. Carlos V. abdicated, Oct. 25 (died 155S). 
1558. Montano the tyrant executed. 

1564. Andres Diaz Venero de Leiva enters Bo- 
gota (February). 

1572. President Leiva founds the Cathedral, 
March 12 (194). 

1574. Venero de Leiva, first president of San- 

tafe, promoted. 

1575. Francisco Briceno, second president, died, 

December 13. 

1579. Quesada died, February 16 (203). 

1580. Lope Diez Aux de Armendariz, third 

president, dies in prison. 
1586. Cartagena taken by Drake, February. 

1596. Cartagena taken by Robert Baal. 

1597. Gonzalez, fourth president, resigned. 

1598. Felipe II. died, September 3. 
1602. Jesuits established in Bogota. 

Francisco de Sande (" Dr. Sangre"), fifth 

president, died. [gena. 

1608 (about). Inquisition established in Carta- 

1620. Failure of the South Sea scheme. 

1621. Feline III. died, March 31. 

1628. Juan de Borja, sixth president, died, 
. February 12. 

1«88. Sancho Jiron, Marquis of Sofraga, sev- 
enth president, suspended. 

1645. Martin Saavedra (Guzman), eighth pres- 
ident, resigned. 

1653. Juan Fernandez C6rdoba (Coalla), Mar- 
quis de Miranda de Auta, ninth pres- 
ident, resigned (died 1664). 

Pp 



1653. Colegio del Rosario founded (263). 
1662. Dionisio Perez - Manrique, Marquis of 

Santiago, tenth president, removed, 

February. 

1664. Diego de Ergiies (Beaumont), eleventh 

president, died, December 25. 

1665. John Morgan takes Portobello. 
Felipe IV. died, September 17. 

1667. Diego del Corro Carrascal, twelfth pres- 
ident, promoted. 

1671. Morgan takes Panama, January 28. 

Diego de Villalba (Toledo), thirteenth 
president, suspended, June 12. 

1674. Melchor Lilian (Cisneros), fourteenth 
president, promoted. 

1686. Francisco Castillo (Concha), fifteenth 
president, died. 

1695. Cartagena taken by Ducasse. 
Cartagena taken by Pointis. 

1700. Carlos II. died, November 1. 

1703. Jil de Cabrera (Davalos), sixteenth 
president, left. 

1712. Diego Cordova Lasso de la Vega, seven- 
teenth president, left. 

1715. Francisco Meneses Bravo, eighteenth 
president, sent home, September 24. 

1719. Francisco del Rincon, nineteenth presi- 
dent, superseded, November 27. 

1724. Jorje Villalonga, first viceroy, recalled, 
May 17. 

1731. Antonio Manso Maldonado, twentieth 
president, left. 

1737. Rafael Eslaba, twenty-first president, 
died, April. 

1739. Antonio Gonzalez Manrique, twenty-sec- 

ond president, died, September 3. 
Portobello taken ''with six ships" by 
Vernon, November 22. 

1740. Francisco Gonzalez Manrique, last pres- 

ident, superseded, April 24. 
Restriction of the Jesuits (508). 
Gregorio Vasquez (Ceballos), painter, 

flourished (192). 

1741. Vernon appeared before Cartagena, Mar. 

13 (43). 
Unsuccessful attack on San Lazaro, April 
20 (48). 

1746. Felipe V. died, July 9. 

1749. Sebastian Eslava, second viceroy, re- 
signed, December 6. 

1753. Jose Alfonso Pizarro, Marquis of Villar, 
third viceroy, resigns. 

1759. Fernando VI. died, August 10. 

1761. Jose Solis Folch de Cardona, fourth vice- 
roy, turned monk, February 24. 

1767. Cedula expelling the Jesuits, October 18 
(50S). 

1770. Census of the viceroyalty S06,209. 



594 



APPENDIX. 



17T3. Pedro Messia Cerda, Marquis de Vega 

de Armijo, fifth viceroy, returns. 
1775. Manuel Guirior, sixth viceroy, promoted. 

1781. The Socorro rebellion, March 26. 
Capitulation of Cipaquira (afterward vi- 
olated), June S. 

1782. Manuel- Antonio Flores, seventh viceroy, 

promoted, March 1. 
Juan de Torrezal Diaz Pimienta, eighth 
viceroy, died, June 11. 

1783. Census of the viceroyalty 1,046,641. 
1785. Great earthquake at Bogota. 

1788. Carlos III. died, December 13. 

1789. Antonio Caballero, ninth viceroy, re- 

signed, January 8. 
Francisco Jil (Lemus), tenth viceroy, 
promoted, July 31. 

1795. Closure of Boca-grande (42). 

1797. Jose Espeleta, eleventh viceroy, pro- 
moted, January 2. 

1801. Humboldt arrived in New Granada. 

1802. Observatory of Bogota begun, May 24 

(265). 

1803. Census of the viceroyalty 2,000,000. 
Pedro Mendinueta (Muzquiz), twelfth 

viceroy, promoted, September 17. 
1808. Jose Celestino Mutis died, September 11 
(216). 
Carlos IV. resigned, March 19. No suc- 
cessor reigned in New Granada. 

1810. Pamploneses imprisoned their corregi- 

dor, July 4. 
Corregidor of Socorro imprisoned by the 

people, July 11. 
Governor of Cartagena driven off, July 14. 
Antonio Amar (Borbon), last viceroy, 

overthrown, July 20. 

1811. General Baraya gains the battle of Pa- 

lace, Pp., March 2S (154). 
General Narino, president of Cundina- 

marca. 
Custodio Garcia-Rovira, president of 

the Provincias Unidas. 

1812. Congress at Leiva. 
Junta general at Bogota. 

Bolivar takes Tenerife, Sm., from the 

Spaniards, December 23. 
Narino attacked at Bogota by Baraya, 

December 24 (565). 

1813. Victory of San Jose, Pm., gained by Bol- 

ivar over Correa, February 28. 
1S14. Narino defeated Samano (Spaniard) at 

Calibio, Pp., January 15. 
Antonio Ricaurte blew up himself and 

the enemy at San Mateo, Venezuela, 

March 25. 
Manuel Bernardo Alvarez, president of 

Cundinamarca. 
Camilo Torres, president of the Congress 

of the United Provinces. 
Bolivar stormed Bogota and overthrew 

the government of Cundinamarca, De- 
cember 12 (566). ^dissolves. 
1315. Cartagena shut out Bolivar. His army 
Pablo Morillo arrived at Porto Santo, 

Venezuela, with 15,000 men from 

Spain, April 13. 
Urdaneta defeated by Calzada (Spanish) 

at Chitaga, Pm. 1, November 80. 
Morillo takes Cartagena by famine after 

116 days' siege, December 5. 
Morillo shot the defenders of Cartagena, 

December. [ry 15. 

1816. Morillo set out from Cartagena, Janua- 
Morillo entered Bogota, May 30. 
Morillo shot the maiden Policarpa Sala- 

varrieta and others, June (165). 
Defeat of Cuchilla del Tambo, Pp. 1 ; 

Herran, Mosquera, and Lopez, prison- 
ers, June 29 (266). 



1S16. Caldas shot by Morillo, October 29 (266). 

1819. Congress of Angostura. Union of New 

Granada and Venezuela, February 15. 

Bolivar made president. 

Bolivar defeated, and took Barreiro at 

Boyaca, Tj. 1, August 7. 
Law of Congress of Angostura creating 
the nation of Colombia, December 17. 
Simon Bolivar president; Zea, Santan- 
der, and Boscio vice-presidents. 
1S20. Calzada took Popayan, January 24. 
Victory of Pitayo, Pp., June 6. 
Truce with Morillo. End of the war of 
extermination, November 27. 

1821. Congress of Cucuta at Rosario, Pm. 8, 

May 6 (205). 
Second battle and great victory of Cara- 

bobo, Venezuela, June 24. 
First Constitution of Colombia, August 

30 (205). 
Cartagena taken from the Spaniards by 

Montilla, October 11. 

1822. Bolivar gained the victory of Bombona, 

Ps. 1, April 7. 
Victory of Pichincha, Ecuador, May 24. 
Ecuador became a part of Colombia, 

May 29. 
Maracaibo capitulated to the Colombian 

arms, August 3. 
1824. Last Spanish battle in Colombia at Bar- 

bacoas, Ps. 2, June 1. 
Last Spanish battle in South America 

gained by Sucre at Ayacucho, Peru, 

1S25. Census of New Granada 1,25S,259. 

1826. Paez revolted from Colombia, April 80 

(206). 
Bolivar re-elected president by the peo- 
ple, Santander vice-president (206). 

1827. Bolivar's fourth resignation (not accept- 

ed), February 6 (206). 
Great earthquake at Bogota, Nov. 16. 

1528. Convention of Ocana, Oc. 1, Mar. 2 (207). 
Quorum destroyed by secession of twen- 
ty, June 10 (207). 

Bolivar proclaimed dictator by Herran, 
June 13 (207). 

War declared against Peru, July 3. 

Organic decree abrogating the Constitu- 
tion of 1821, August 27 (207). 

Attempt to assassinate Bolivar, Septem- 
ber 25 (207). 

Battle of Ladera, Pp. 1. Obando and Lo- 
pez against the dictator, November 12. 

Unsuccessful attack of the Peruvians on 
Guayaquil, Ecuador, November 22. 

1529. Victory over the Peruvians at Portete de 

Tarqui, Ecuador, February 27. 

Cordova defeated by Dictatorial troops 
at Santuario and murdered, An. 4, Oc- 
tober 17 (135, 209). 

Secession of Venezuela under Paez, No- 
vember 24. 

1830. Constituent Congress of Bogota, Jan. 20. 
Fifth and last resignation of Bolivar (ac- 
cepted), May 4. 

Second Constitution of Colombia (209). 
Congress elected Joaquin Mosquera 

president of Colombia, May 4 (209, 

250). 
Assassination of Marshal Antonio-Jose 

de Sucre at Berruecos, Ps. 1, June 4 

(252). 
Defeat of government at Santuario, B. 6, 

August 27 (250). 
Rafael Urdaneta dictator, September 2. 
Bolivar died at Santamarta, December 

17 (210). 

1831. Treaty of Juntas, B. 12. Domingo Cai- 

cedo vice-president, April 28 (250, 345). 



APPENDIX. 



595 



1881. Complete dismemberment of Colombia 

(209). 
Convention of Bogota, October 20. 
Caicedo resigns. Jose Maria Obando 

elected vice-president by Convention, 

November 22 (250). 

1832. First Constitution of New Granada, 

March 1 (250). 
Francisco de Paula Santander elected 
president by the Convention, March 9 
(250). 

1833. Santander, again elected by the people, 

took his seat, April 1. 
Sarda conspiracy, 15-20 executed (250). 
1835. Census of New Granada 1,687,109. 
1837. Jose Ignacio Marquez president, April 1 ; 

(elected by the people) (251). 

1839. FourconventsinPasto suppressed, June 5. 
Obando defeated by government at Bue- 

saco, Ps. 1, August 31. 

1840. Government gains the battle of Culebre- 

ra, B. 6, October 28 (135, 253). 

1841. Government gains the battle of Tescua, 

Pm. 1, April 1 (253). 
Pedro Alcantara Herran president, April 
1 ; (elected by the people) (507). 

1842. Cartagena taken, and the Revolution 

ended, February 19 (44). 
Eecall of the Jesuits (508). 

1843. Census of New Granada 1,932,279. 
Second Constitution of New Granada, 

April 80 (508). 
1S45. Tomas Cipriano de Mosquera president, 
April 1 ; (elected by the people) (509). 

1849. Jose Hilario Lopez elected by Congress, 

March 7 (521). 

1850. Re-expulsion of the Jesuits, May 18 (528). 
Misgovernment in the Cauca (527). 



1851. 



1852. 
1S53. 



1854. 



1855. 
1856. 



Assassination of Pinto and Morales, June 
19 (529). 

Seizure of Ospina at Bogota, July 80 (192). 

Battle of Rionegro, An. 6. Revolution 
ended,* September 7. 

Census of New Granada 2,248,730. 

Slavery abolished, January 1 (527). 

Jose Maria Obando president, April 1 ; 
(elected by the people) (257;. 

Third Constitution of New Granada, 
May 21 (540). 

Revolution broke out in Popayan, Pp. 1, 
April 8 (563). 

Riot at Bogota, April 14 (555). 

General Jose Maria Melo seized the ex- 
ecutive officers, April 17 (558). 

Tomas Herrera, designado, lawfully in 
power, April 21 (563). [562). 

Melo's troops enter Honda, April 25 (104, 

Franco defeated and slain at Cipaquira, 
B. 3, May 19 (568). 

Buitrago defeated at Tiquiza, B. 3, May 
21 (563). 

Battle in Cali, Bv. 1, June 16 (529). 

Jose de Obaldia, vice-president, in su- 
preme power. 

Surprise of Guaduas by Arboleda, June 
23 (568). 

Battle of Palmira, Cc. 4, Aug. 31. 

Battle of Boza, B. 1, November 22 (564). 

Action of Tres Esquinas at Bogota, No- 
vember 23 (565). 

Bogota taken and the revolution ended, 
December 4 (556). 

Manuel Maria Mallarino vice-president, 
April 1 (522). (Obando deposed.) 

Assassination of Antonio Mateus, Dec. 4. 

Election for president, August 31 (567). 



* Neither Herran nor Mosquera were in the country during this revolution, nor was L6pez during the one that pre- 
ceded. It does not appear that either of these three presidents ever drew sword against the constitutional authority 
of his country. (See p. 251.) The misrepresentations on which the remarks were based were the work of political 
hate. This correction, thus late and out of place, is one of sheer justice. 



X. WEIGHTS AND MEASURES. 

Four kinds of weights and measures have been in legal use in New Granada 
in this century. 

I. The Castilian, established June 26, 1801 ; abolished October 12, 1821. 

II. The Colombian, established in 1821 ; abolished May 26, 1836. 

HI. The Granadan, established in 1836 ; abolished June 8, 1853. 

rv. The French, established in 1853, now the legal system in New Granada. 

The following account, calculated from official documents furnished at the 
last hour, must be regarded as approximate only, for the confusion is utter and 
inextricable. The figures preceding denominations show how many are required 
to make one of the next higher. The liquid gallon used below contains 231 
cubic inches ; the bushel, 2150.42. 



I. Measures of Length. 
Legal. 
Miriametro 6.214 miles. 
10 Quil6metro 0.621 miles. 
10 Hectometre 19.872 rods. 
10 Decametro 10.986 yards. 
10 Metro 3.28099 feet. 
10 Decimetro 3.937 inches. 
10 Centimetro 0.893 inches. 
10 Milimetro 0.039 inches. 

Castilian and Colombian. 
Vara 2.742 feet. 
3 Pie 0.915 feet. 
12 Pulgada 0.914 inches. 
12 Linea 0.076 inches. 



Granadan. 
Vara 2.625 feet. 
4 Cuarta 7.874 inches. 
2 Octava 3.937 inches. 
10 Pulgada 0.7S7 inches. 
10 Linea 0.079 inches. 

II. Itdjeeaey. 
Legal. 
Miriametro 6.214 miles. 
10 Quilometro 0.621 miles. 
10 Hectometro 19.872 rods. 
10 Decametro 10.396 yards. 
10 Metro 3.2S1 feet. 

Castilian. 
Legua 8.463 miles. 



596 



APPENDIX. 



66661 Vara 2.742 feet. 
Pi6 0.914 feet. 

Colombian. 
Legua 3.116. 
3 Milla 1.039 miles. 
2000 Vara 2.742 feet. 
3 Pie 0.914 feet. 

Granadan. 
Legua 3.107 miles. 
62i Cuadra 15.907 rods. 
100 Vara 2.625 feet. 

III. SUPEEFICIAL. 

Legal. 
Metro cuadrada 10.764 square feet. 
100 Decimetro cuadrada 15.500 square inches. 
100 Centimetro cuadrada 0.155 square inches. 
100 Milimetro cuadrada 0.015 square inches. 
Castilian and Colombian. 
Vara 7.521 square feet. 
9 Pi6 0.836 square feet. 
144 Pulgada 0.S36 square inches. 
114 Linea 0.006 square inches. 
Oranadan. 
Vara 6.889 square feet. 
16 Cuarta 62.002 square inches. 
4 Octava 15.501 square inches. 
25 Pulgada 0.620 square inches. 
100 Linea 0.006 square inches. 

IV. Ageaeian. 

Legal. 
Miriara 247.110 acres. 
10 Quiloara 27.711 acres. 
10 Hectoara 2.471 acres. 
10 Decara 89.538 rods. 
10 Ara 107.642406 feet. 
10 Deciara 10.764 feet. 
10 Cen tiara 1.076 feet. 
10 Miliara 0.108 feet. 

Castilian. 
Fanegada 1.591 acres. 
12 Celemin 21.217 rods. 
4 Cuartillo 5.304 rods. 
4 Estadal 188.034 feet. 
25 Vara 7.521 feet. 

Aranzada 1.105 acres. 
Cabellaria 61.396 rods. 
4 Peonia 15.849 rods. 

Colombian. 
Fanegada 1.727 acres. 
4 Estancia 69.066 rods. 
4 Celemin 17.267 rods. 
4 Cuartillo 4.317 rods. 
6i Estadal 188.034 feet. 
25 Vara 7.521 feet. 

Granadan 
Fanegada 1.582 acres. 
16 Aranzada 15.815 rods. 
25 Estadal 0.633 rods. 
25 Vara 6.889 feet. 

V. Cubic. 
Legal. 
Miriaesterio 89241 yards. 
10 Quiloesterio 8924.1 yards. 
10 Hectoesterio 392.41 yards. 
10 Decaesterio 39.241 yards. 
10 Esterio 35.817 feet. 
10 Deciesterio 3.532 feet. 
10 Centiesterio 610.278 inches. 
10 Miliesterio 61.028 inches. 

Castilian and Colombian. 
Vara 20.627 feet. 
27 Pie" 0.764 feet. 
1728 Pulgada 0.764 inches. 
1728 Linea 0.005 inches. 

Granadan. 
Vara IS. 082 feet. 



64 Cuarta 4S8.216 incheE. 
8 Octava 61.027 inches. 
125 Pulgada .488 inches. 
1000 Linea 0.0005 inches. 

VI. Dey Meabues. 
Legal. 
Mirialitro 283.738 bushels. 
10 Quilolitro 28.374 bushels. 
10 Hectolitro 2.837 bushels. 
10 Decalitre 0.284 bushels. 
10 Litro 0.908 quarts. 
10 Decilitro 0.091 quarts. 
10 Centilitro 0.009 quarts. 
10 Mililitro 0.0009 quarts. 

Castilian and Colombian. 
Cahiz 18.658 bushels. 
12 Fanega 1.555 bushels. 
12 Celemin 0.518 pecks. 
2 Medio celemin 2.073 quarts. 
4 Cuartillo 1 quart=91.1977 pulgadas cubicas. 
Granadan. 
Cahiz 73.535 bushels. 
12 Fanega 6.128 bushels. 
12 Almud 0.511 bushels. 

2 Medio almud 1 peck=1125 pulgadas cubicas. 

VII. Liquid Measuee. 
Legal. 
Mirialitro 2641. 7S gallons. 
10 Quilolitro 264.178 gallons. 
10 Hectolitro 26.418 gallons. 
10 Decalitro 2.642 gallons. 
10 Litro 1.05672 quarts. 
10 Decilitro 0.8454 gills. 
10 Centilitro 0.0845 gills. 
10 Mililitro 0.008 gills. 

Castilian and Colombian. 
Moyo 68.217 gallons. 
16 Cantara 4.263 gallons. 
8 Azumbre 1.066 quarts. 
4 Cuartillo 2.182 gills=40.2838 pulgadas cubi- 
cas. 

Granadan. 
Moyo 16.908 gallons. 
8 Cantara 2.113 gallons. 
8 Azumbre 1.057 quarts=125 pulgadas cubicas. 

VIII. "Weights. 
Legal. 
Miri6gramo 22.047 lbs. avoirdupois. 
10 Quilogramo 2.205 lbs. 
10 Hectogramo 220 lbs. 
10 Decagramo 154.332 grains. 
10 Gramo 15.48316 grains. 
10 Decigramo 1.543 grains. 
10 Centigramo 0.154 grains. 
10 Miligramo 0.0015 grains. 

Castilian and Colombian. 
Quintal 101.418 lbs. avoirdupois. 
4 Arroba 25.354 lbs. 
25 Libra 1.014 lbs. 
16 Onza 1.014 ounces. 
16 Adarme 1.014 drachms. 

3 Tomin 9.244 grains. 
12 Grano 0.77033 grains. 

Granadan. 
Quintal 110.237 lbs. avoirdupois. 

4 Arroba 27.559 lbs. 
25 Libra 1.102 lbs. 

16 Onza 1.102 ounces. 

16 Adarme 1.102 drachms. 

40 Grano 0.7633 grains. 

IX. Special Castilian Weights. 
Silver. 
Marco 0.5070895 lbs. avoirdupois. 
8 Onza 443.704 grains. 
8 Ochava 55.463 grains. 
6 Tomin 9.244 grains. 



APPENDIX. 



597 



12 Grano 0.770 grains. 

Chid. 
Marco 0.507 lbs. avoirdupois. 
50 Castellano 70.993 grains. 
8 Tomin 8.874 grains. 
12 Grano 0.74 grains. 



Medicine. 
Libra 0.9245 lb troy. 
12 Onza 0.9245 ?. 
8 Dracma 0.9245 3. 
3 Escrupulo 0.9245 3. 
24 Grano 0.77033 grains. 



XI. ANALYTICAL INDEX. 

In the following index an attempt is made to collect the topics and things in- 
troduced into the narrative, and arrange them in the order they might occupy 
in a philosophical treatise on New Granada. The references are to pages, and 
those preceded byy. refer to the page where the object is figured. The index is 
arranged into thirty-two sections, as follows : 

1. Physical Geography. 

2. Races and Conditions of Men. 

3. Dress. 

4. Habitations. 

5. Furniture. 

6. Kitchen and Utensils. 

7. "Water and Drinks. 

8. Food. 

9. Domestic Employments. 

10. Agriculture. 

11. Pastoral Occupations. 

12. Manufactures. 

13. Transportation by Water. 

14. Traveling and Transportation by 

Land. 

15. Commerce and Trade. 

16. Government. 

17. Political Parties. 



18. Treasury Department. 

19. Foreign Eelations. 

20. War and Marine Departments. 

21. Government Department — Law. 

22. Government Department — Hospi- 

tals, Diseases, and Physicians. 

23. Government Department — Schools 

and Literature. 

24. Fine Arts. 

25. Amusements, Habits, and Social 

Life. 

26. Morals. 

27. Religion — Dogmas. 

28. Religion — Material Objects. 

29. Religion — Persons. 

30. Religion — Ceremonies. 

31. Animals. 

32. Plants. 



Section 1. — Physical Geography. 



Position of New Granada, 19. 

Mountains : Cordillera de Santamarta, 25, 
\Lt; Bogota, 239; Quindio, 355; Caldas, 525, 
536; Honda ra" ge, 340; Tibacui, 817; abrupt, 
90, 126; without rock, 355. Throwing stones 
from a precipice, 219, 276; measuring altitudes 
by the thermometer, 265. 

Scenery : from Alto del Sargento, 104 ; 
from Careperro, 435 ; from near Cartago, 374 ; 
Zonza, 505. 

s Geolo ,ical Section, 587 ; observations on the 
map, 571. 

Climates, 73 ; influence of altitude, 22, 237 ; 
of latitude, 523 ; chart of altitudes, 589 ; cli- 
mate map, 590 ; change of vegetation, 126 ; 
nights always cold, 238 ; cold night, 368. 

Tierra fria, 73 ; its plants, 215 ; rarity of 
the air, 127, 271 ; agreeable to the natives, 215 ; 
chapping the face, 128 ; blue sky, 271 ; hail, 
210; frost, 271 ; want of trees at Bogota, 221. 

Paramo: Of Choachi, 237 ; Cruz-verde, 255 ; 
"angry," 23S; emparamar, 370. 

Perpetual Snow : Santamarta range, 26 ; 
Tolima, 215. 

Hydrographio notions, 235 ; banda, 19. 

Mountain Lakes : Plain of Bogota, 126 ; La- 
guna-grande, 248. 



River Magdalena: Floating on the sea, 28 ; 
bar at the mouth, 27 ; lower river, 40 ; Honda 
rapids, 95; upper river, 320; change of sand- 
bars, 341. 

River Cauca, 19; mouth, 60; rapids, 19; 
Upper Cauca, 400, 411 ; swimming it, 411. 

River Bogota: Upper river, 274; Falls of 
Tequendama, 274, /. 281 ; lower river, 344. 

Minerals: Gold, 2S9, 8S1, 526; silver, 100; 
mines of precious metals a misfortune, 500; 
iron, 239 ; copper, 239, 525 ; salt, 239 ; sulphur, 
357 ; coal, 239, 523 ; lignite, 523 ; bitumen, 342 ; 
lime, 524 ; emeralds, 239. 

Springs: Libraida, 415 ; Mesa, 846. Warm: 
Choachi, 242 ; Tabio, 242 ; Agua-caliente, 858 ; 
Toche, 359. Sulphur spring, 343 ; salt, 438 ; 
Rio Vinagre, 19. 

Volcano: Extinct, 836; pumice-stone, 336 ; 
mud volcano, 47 ; "Volcanes," 349, 351. 

Animals in § 31. Plants, § 32. 

Natural bridge, 309; Hoyo del Aire, 263; 
natural picture, 524. 

Meteorology : Seasons, 270 ; horizon al- 
ways cloudy, 467, 21 ; perpetual rain, 290 ; fogs 
and mist, 278; lunar influences, 110, 474; me- 
teorological observations — Bogotd, 270 ; Cauca, 
590. 



598 



APPENDIX. 



Section 2. — Races and Conditions op Men. 



Indians : Goajiras, 26 ; Uplanders, 246, /. 
240, 292 ; not exposed to brutality, 247 ; sub- 
dued by conversion, 26 ; extermination on the 
Magdalena, 60 ; in the Cauca, 24, 436 ; Muiscas, 
202 ; Zaquesazipa's death, 248 ; reserves, 242; 
"Aztec" dwarfs, 396. 

European Race: Chapetones and criollos, 
168; conquerors, 23; Orejones, 182,/. 132; ca- 
chacos, 146; collecting a debt of one, 560; 
guarichas, 174; ladies in a procession, 551; 



beauty in children, 557 ; morals, 542 ; passions 
not violent, 23. 

Negroes : Prevalence of the race, 518 ; slav- 
ery and its extinction, 50S, 527 ; negress a term 
of endearment, 481 ; mute children, 396. 

Mixed Races, 69 ; school in Cali, 518; poor in 
Bogota, 178; poor near Bogota, 219; low stature. 
227; small feet, 236; the aged, 532; bogas (in 
5 13); cargueros, 98; silleros, 363,/. 364; le- 
nera, 221 ; with babe, 225 ; gold washers, 526. 



Section 3.— Deess. 



Male Deess : Tapa, 69, /. 70 ; camisa, 136 ; 
pantalones, 136 ; ruana, 82 ; bayeton, 32 ; encau- 
chado, 32 ; hat of jipijapa, 63 ; raspon, 69, /. 
70, 136; funda, 133; barbuquejo, 188, /. 132; 
zamarros, 133, / 182, 426; (not allowed in 
church), 412 ; alpargates, 286, /. 236 ; albarcas, 
35,/. 292; carriel, 101, 536. 

Female Deess: Camison, 59, / 59 ; camisa, 
145, /. 136; arandela, 145, / 441; enaguas, 
145 ; chircate, 136, /. 136 ; maure, 187 ; paflo- 
lon, 145; mantellina, 136, /. 136; gorra, 112. 
Bonnets rare, 112; felt hat, 157; combs not 
common, 526. Blue a common color, 68. 



Peiest's Deess: Hat, 192, /. 193; sotana, 
193 ; chaqueta, 193 ; manteo, 193 ; sotacuello, 
65 ; habitos, 193, / 193 ; (vestments for offici- 
ating, § 29) ; (tonsure, 66). 

Penitent's dress, 545; capirote, 545 ; cucuru- 
cho, 546. 

Church dress of females, 184; saya, 184; 
mantellina, 1S4. 

Soldiers' uniforms, 22S. 

Bride's dress, 451; riding dress, 380,/. 381; 
traveling dress, 8S0, /. 240 ; bathing dress, 399 ; 
at Honda, 99. 

Foreign fashions, 245. 



Section 4. — Habitations. 



Houses: Casa claustrada, 62, / 139; alta, 
62 ; baj a, 68. Arrangement of house in Honda, 
97; Bogota, 13S, /. 139 ; Fusagasuga, 300 ; Cau- 
ca, 463, /. 464. Walls of adobe, 170 ; tapias, 375 ; 
guadua, 464. Hoofs of tile, 62; thatch, 36; 
guadua, 524. Floor of earth, 324, 463 ; brick, 
468; cement, 840; bitumen, 342. 

Bancho, 246; of bihai, 874; of Fonrcroya, 
495; tent, 356 ; tambo, 365 ; small hut, 213, 225. 



Parts of house : Zaguan, 62 ; porton, 62, / 
156 ; inner door, 13S ; corredor, 62 ; pretil, 62 ; 
patio, 62; sala, 48. Windows: Reja, 30; sash 
and glass, 140 ; glass scarce, 140. Doors: 
Coarse, 170; with curtain only, 465; mampara, 
174. 

Towns : laid out bylaw, 85; large towns, 513. 
List of towns and population, 575. Plaza, 18 , 
plazuela, 154. 



Section 5.-^Fubnittxee. 



Carpets, 139 ; matting, 178. 

Seats: Poyo, 49, 402; sofa, 139; lounge, 
425; easy-chair, 425; arm-chair, 425; chair, 
425; stool, 425; pellon, 1S8. 

Tables : Immovable and small, 402 ; coarse, 
404; low, 174 

Books rare, 170, 402 ; clocks and watches, 22; 
saints' images, 139 ; pictures, 139. 

Bell-pull, 203. 

No fires for warmth, 270. 

Bedsteads : immovable, 402; hide-bottom- 



ed, 49 ; cot, 147 ; swing for cradle, 402 ; mat- 
ting, 40; hide on the floor, 316; a good bed, 
3S3. Pillow, 49 ; filled with cotton, 148. Ham- 
mock, 4S ; convenience, 83 ; in boat, 83 ; in 
houses, 490, 536 ; in corredor, 125, 465, 501 ; in 
the woods, 492, 496 ; -with musquito-net, 55. 

Sleeping: Warm in hammock, 368; cold, 
368; at Bolivia, 587; denuded (gentleman), 
3S4; (ladies and children), 422; wrapped up, 
422 ; not two together, 538 ; in day-clothes, 467 ; 
on horseback, 291. 



Section 6. — Kitchen and Utensils. 



Kitchens : Apart from the house, 458 ; a 
raneho, 395 ; not neat, 142 ; floors never wash- 
ed, 330 ; brooms, 474 Grinding-stone, 89 ; tin- 
ajera, 115. 

Fiee-place : Tulpas, 56 ; forge, 142 ; fur- 
nace, 466 ; kettles in arches, 466 ; no chimney, 
142 ; too short, 45S, 466 ; useless, 262 ; smoke- 
hole, 142. Oven, 149, 466. Fuel at Bogota, 221 ; 
striking fire, 468 ; tinder, 468. 



Cooking Vessels : Tinajon, 143 ; funda, 
350 ; paila, 466 ; olla, 120, 143 ; olleta, 89, 143. 

Dishes: Terrapin shell, 56 ; totuma, 74; car- 
ried in the hat, 494 ; calabazo, 74 ; trough, 89 ; 
tinaja, 75 ; gacha, 144 ; miieura, 115 ; tarro, 
109, /. 386 ; silver goblets, 472 ; in the woods, 
498; plate for saucer, 200. Spoons of wood, 
17; of totuma, 120; silver, 141, 471, 498; no 
teaspoons, 471. 



Section 7. — Water and Drinks. 



Fountain: Guaduas, 115; Ibague, 380; Bo- 
gota, 154; its aqueduct, 212; (for aqueducts, 
see § 10) ; no wells, 415 ; springs, 346, 415. 

Water-carriers : Guaduas, 115 ; Bogota, 145 ; 
Cartago, 3S6, /. 3S6 ; Sabanilla, 33 ; at a hacien- 
da, 469. Water left to settle, 75, 391 ; never cool, 
7"; Magdalena and Nare Rivers, 75. Drinking 
with dulce, 494 ; (bathing and swimming in § 25). 



Chocolate, 471 ; its preparation, 89, 466 ; cof- 
fee, 34, 475 ; panela water, 360. Spirits: 
Aguardiente, 448 ; (distilling in § 12 ; excise, 
§ IS ; intemperance, § 26) ; anisado, 56 ; milk 
punch, 415 ; mistela, 440. Fermented drinks : 
Chicha, 144; prepared by chewing, 144; gua- 
rapo, 107 ; with sirup, 459 ; with spirit, 843 ; 
guarruz, 353 ; limonada, 36 ; naranjada, 121, 



APPENDIX. 



599 



Section 8. — Food. 



Meals, hours for : Honda, 98 ; Bogotii, 149 ; 
delay in preparing, 123, 511 ; breakfast at 4 
P.M., 821; at 6 A. M., 501; none, 511; dinners: 
at night, 325, 352, 35T, 511 ; nothing for dinner, 
488 ; long fasts, 325, 354, 366, 401. 

Service of tables, 471 ; on boat, 5S ; short al- 
lowance on champan, 86. Women eating apart, 
397 ; on the ground, 397. (Price of board and 
meals in § 14.) 

Bread, 141 : not made in families, 141 ; 
maize grinding, 89, 143; arepas, 372; bollo, 
108; cazabe, 62. Cake from roots: almoja- 
vana, 473 ; suspiro, 472 ; sagii, 146 ; pie, 150 ; 
custard, 318. 

Milk, 473 ; (milking and dairy in § 9) ; cheese 
in chocolate, 473, 534 ; with dulce, 473 ; butter 
on the Magdalena, 56; in Bogota, 141; lard, 
56 ; eggs, 149 ; fried arracacha, 498 ; fried plan- 
tains, 471 ; fried bananas, 343 ; palmiche, 149. 



Sweetmeats (dulce) at close of meals, 473 ; in 
the evening, 475 ; before drinking, 494 Alfan- 
doque, 124; panela, 122; sugar, 122; miel, 
122; miel de purga, 122; molassess thrown 
away, 511 ; almibar, 122 ; melado, 122 ; honey, 
122. ' 

Beef: Slaughtering, 4S6; tasajo, 56 ; "fried 
oakum," 471 ; guisado, 473 ; came de menudo. 
177 ; mondongo, 177. Pork, 143 ; chicken, 141 ; 
turkey, 146, 295 ; goat, 56 ; bear, 367 ; veni- 
son, 496 ; monkey, 485. Fish : Honda, 98 ; Bo- 
gota, 172 ; La Paila, 448 ; prolific tendency of 
fish diet, 57, 71. 

Dishes: Tamal, 143; sausage, 120; ajiaco, 
120 ; puchero, 149 ; olla podrida, 149 ; sancocho, 
471 ; masamorra, 371 ; soup, 141 ; omelet, 149 
of turtle eggs, 486 ; blood, 142. Capsicum, 295 
cummin - seed, 120 ; color, 141 ; garlic, 295 
lemon-juice, 295. 



Section 9. — Domestic Employments. 



Housework : "Washing, 503 ; (cooking in § 8 ; 
chocolate making, § 7) ; milking, 469 ; making 
cheese, 470; soap, 469; grinding maize, 89, 
143. 

Spinning, 289; weaving, 519; of ruanas, 



533 ; of manta, 519 ; (manufactures in § 12) ; 
getting out fique, 246 ; making cord, 246 ; al- 
pargates, 236 ; guambias, 246 ; cigars, 99, 107, 
817 ; braiding hats, 105. 
Securing eggs, 471. 



Section 10. — Agriculture. 



Farms and estates large, 418; Mr. Byrne's, 
512 ; small, 422 ; distant, 422. 

Irrigation : Aqueducts and acequias, 500 ; 
unbridged, 500; skill of acequeros, 501, 523; 
Guaduas, 115 ; Bogota, 212 ; Ibague, 380 ; San 
Pedro, 501 ; Cerrito, 509 ; Cali, 523. 

Fences : rare, 131 ; of wood, 181 ; tree-fern, 
129; stone, 273; tapias, 181; adobe, 131, 226; 
tiled, 131 ; guaduas, 109 ; cornstalks, 539. 
Hedge, 103; ditch, 131; gates, 92,/. 506. 

Tools : Axe, 4S7 ; machete, 17, /. 70 ; pala, 
487; plow, 133, 273; yoke, 2S9; cart, 487. 



Culture of maize, 487 ; plantain, 4S7 ; rice, 
500; cane, 118, 487, 535; (grinding, etc., in § 
12 ; products of cane in § 8) ; wheat, 133, 400 ; 
guaduas, 535. Clearing land, 4S7; plowing. 
273 ; carrying cane, 474, 315 ; drawing guaduas. 
474 ; making ditch, 131 ; getting out cacao, 
threshing, 133. 

Horticulture : Locks necessary, 303 ; garden 
at Fusagasuga, 303 ; Bolivia, 538 ; school-yard, 
376; little garden, 399 ; abandoned, 90. Scarc- 
ity of fruit, 403, 467. 

(Hunting and fishing in § 25.) 



Section 11. — Pastoral Occupations. 



Montura : Saddle, 424 ; stirrups, 133, /. 132 ; 
girth, 424 ; cqjinetes, 424 ; sudadero, 425 ; 
breeching, 133, /. 132 ; bridle, 424 ; halter, 
183,/. 132; spurs, 371: lazo, 425,/. 426. 

Horses: Throwing the lazo, 426; catching 
colt, 427 ;■ leading him off, 430 ; breaking, 430; 
artificial pace, 430; horses well broken, 423; 
jockey knowledge of ladies, 399 ; comparative 
merits of horses, mules, and oxen, 202. Horse 
breeding, 480 ; padrotes, 480 ; atajada, 430. 
Mule raising, 431 ; burro, 481; tarjado, 431. 

Cows: Herding, 427; catching, 427; dying 



with rage, 428 ; leading, 42S; triple yoke, 289 : 
setting loose, 428, 432 ; driving a drove, 433 ; 
cayenne in the eyes, 433 ; forked post, 429, 485 ; 
marking, 429; counter branding, 438. Ex- 
tracting worms, 429 ; (milking and dairy in § 9) ; 
fattening, 39S ; salt needed, 398 ; slaughtering, 
486 ; drying meat, 4S6 ; in the blood, 534. 
Uses for hide, 385; fed to dogs, 496; stolen 
by dogs, 425, 490. Cattle raising in Casanare, 
176 ; on the Sabana, 131. 

Hogs, 43S; goats, 465, 474, 476; sheep, 402. 

Prices in § 15. 



Section 12. — Manufactories. 



Unwillingness to labor, 72 ; want of motive, 
71, 511, 540; irregularity, 268. 

Cane : Water mills. — Puerta, 815 ; Cune, 118 ; 
Aurora, 509 ; Arroyo-hondo, 524. Sugar- 
making, 509, 511 ; (products of cane in § 8) ; 
distilling, 448; still, 448,/. 448; distilleries, 
118, 509 ; (excise, § 18 ; drinks, § 7 ; intemper- 
ance, § 26). 

Saw-mill : Facatativd, 129 ; Tequendama, 



2S6. Sawing by hand, 3S. Chopping out 
plank, 86. 

Wheat-mill: Bogota, 226, 209 ; Boquia, 371. 

Manufactory of cotton cloth, 269 ; paper, 
269 ; combs, 526 ; earthenware, 26S ; glass, 269 ; 
iron, 239; crude quinine, 269; sulphate of 
quinine, 286; gunpowder, 227. 

Painting and varnishing, 512. Pasto var- 
nish, 512 ; turning-lathe, 404. 



Section 13. — Transportation by Water. 



Steam-boats : Companies, 54. Prices, 54. 
Ladies' 'cabins, 55; beds, 55; captains, 54 ; en- 
gineers, 57 ; pilots, 57 ; contramaestre, 55 ; 
bogas, 55; servants, 58; meals, 56. Baggage 
allowed, 55; inaccessible, 55. Starting, 41; 
lying by at night, 58, 71 ; delays, 63; aground, 
77; passenger left, 61. 

Pole-boats : Champan, 81, /. 80 ; bongo, 



39 ; toldo, SI ; palanca, 39 ; gancho, 39. Can- 
alete, 39, /. 70. Patron, 89 ; patrona, SI ; bo- 
gas, 39. Poling, 89; paddling across, 85; 
passing wasps' nests, 90. 

Bogas: Hard work, S4; shouting, 82; fight- 
ing, 86; praying, S2; frolicking, 85; delays, 
S5 ; negotiating, 7S. 

Canal de la Piua, 40 ; Dique, 50. 



600 



APPENDIX. 



Section 14. — Travel and Transportation by Land. 



Roads. — Road-making: North Americans 
needed, 121 ; road wanted to the Pacific. 525. 
Immense ascents and descents, 255, 290; un- 
necessary, 117, 122, 293, 345, 359, 361; road 
around a hill, 347 ; crosses at the top, 239, 255, 
290 ; national road, 347, 373. 

Wheel-roads: Too good, 129, 353; "Western, 
129; Northern, 202; Southern, 272; necessary 
for saw-mills, 129 ; carriages in Cartagena, 43 ; 
in Bogota, 2S6; Vueltas de la Vireina, 137; 
carts at Barranquilla, 41 ; in the Cauca, 4S7 ; 
allowed with one bull only in Bogota, 155. 

Mule-roads, IS ; opposed by cargueros, 202 ; 
quingo, 18, 361 ; callejon, 214; too narrow, 320; 
contadero, 290 ; atascadero, 345, 524 ; almo- 
hadillado, 345 ; resbaladero, 345 ; derrumbe, 
344. 

Bridges: Few, 390; solid, 162; ruined by 
earthquake, 95; narrow, 313, 499; of brick, 
523 ; stone, 355 ; guadua, 417 ; wood, with 
thatched roof, 871 ; with zinc roof, 345. 

Ferries, 94 ; who pays, 324 ; delays, 316, 320 ; 
passage refused, 822 ; fatigue of swimming, 
411 ; crossing by cargueros, 319 ; Rio Seco, 342. 

Beasts op Burden : Comparison of horses, 
mules, and bulls, 202; kicking, 152; pay of 
mules and peon, 45. 

Pack-saddle, 45 ; rude saddle, 35 ; (for sad- 
dles, &c, see § 11) ; encerado, 44; petaca, 45; 



atillo, 45 ; almofrez or vaca, 2S9, f. 2S8 ; loan 
of saddle, 100; hire of saddle, 117 ; sillon, 
241, /. 240 ; galapago, 425 ; loading mules, 45 ; 
tercio, 45; carga, 45; sobrecarga, 51. 

Care of Beasts on a Journey: Fasting, 48, 
107 ; destroncado, 52 ; feeding on cane, 470 ; on 
plantains, 372 ; tethering, 458 ; pasture, 342 ; 
grasses, 398 ; fencing up the road, 492 ; water- 
ing, 123 ; word to stop, 129. 

Jtiiding: Horsemanship, 3SS; women riding 
astride, 291 ; discretion allowed to mule, 102 ; 
sleeping on horseback, 291; exhausted horse, 
503 ; driving your pony, 293 ; catching without 
lazo, 482. 

Human Carriers : Cargueros, 93 ; of factory 
machinery, 94 ; of heavy loads, 93 ; of babe, 
291, /. 292; of men, 362, /. 864; falling and 
slipping, 373 ; riding with spurs ! 371 ; rich sil- 
lero, 93 ; silla, 365, /. 364. 

Traveling Expenses, 323; mule-hire, 39, 
52, 117, 2S7, 314, 375; meals on the road, 49, 
121 ; board : Barranquilla, 36 ; Bogota, 137 ; 
Ibague, 325. 

Stopping -places : Anapoima, 346 ; Juntas, 
345; Pescaderias, 101; Botello, 127; Bogota, 
137 ; Pandi, 310 ; Ibague, 325 ; Barranquilla, 
36; Honda, 97; Arjona, 48; Guaduas, 106. 

Distances on roads, 575 ; legua, 47. 

Passports, 30. 



Section 15. — Commerce and Trade. 



Harbors : Santamarta, 42 ; Sabanilla, 41 
Cartagena, 42. Wharves: Sabanilla, 39; Car 
tagena, 42. Pilot, 29 ; (custom-houses in § 18) 

Indians born to traffic, 259 ; credit system 
385 ; barter, 885 ; (coins in § IS) ; advertise- 
ments, 385 ; disputed demand, 337. 

Stores, 157 ; tienda, 48, 144 ; venta, 119 
bodega, 92 ; bodeguero, 92. 



Markets : Bogota, 175 ; Facatativa, 128 ; ou 
Sunday at Guaduas, 111 ; at Fusagasuga, 296 ; 
at Ibague, 325. 

Prices : Agricultural products, 4S7 ; cacao, 
89; cattle, 39S, 432; sugar, 122; wood, 226; 
(traveling expenses and board in § 14). 

Weights and measures, 593; not used, 119, 
448. 



Section 16. — Government. 



Territorial Divisions, 37 ; provincias, 37 ; 
cantones, 37 ; abolished, 88 ; distrito, 37 ; par- 
roquia (abolished), 37; vice-parroquia (abol- 
ished), 37 ; aldea, 37 ; territorio, 37. 

Office obligatory, 169, 334; onerous, 255; 
salary taken from jefes politicos, 334. 

Constitutions : Of Colombia in 1S21, 205 , 
in 1880, 209; of New Granada in 1832, 250 ; in 
1843, 257, 50S; in 1S53, 257, 540. Instability, 
258; weakness of executive, 258, 540; vetoes, 
334; joint sessions, 258. 

Presidents : Bolivar, 204 ; Joaquin Mosque- 
ra, 209 ; Santander, 250 ; Marquez, 251 ; Her- 
ran, 507, 593 ; T. C. Mosquera, 509, 593 ; Lo- 
pez, 172, 593 ; Obando, 172, 530 ; next presi- 
dent, 567 ; military attendants, 290 ; palace, 172. 



Usurpers of supreme power : Urdaneta, 250 ; 
Melo, 557. 

Vice-presidents: Caicedo, 250; Obaldia, 
559 ; Mallarino, 522. 

Gobernadores : Julian Ponce, 37 ; Uricoe- 
chea, 333; Justo Briceno, 847; Pedro Gutier- 
rez (Lee), 262; Emigdio Briceflo, 558; Carlos 
Gomez, 529; Wenceslao Carvajal, 530; Anto- 
nio Mateus, 529, 593 ; Miguel Cabal, 507. 

Jefes Pol! ticos : Colonel Acosta, 107 ; Sam- 
per, the poet and historian, 509. 

Alcalde of Pandi, 310. 

Elections, 258, 449; interference of priests, 
557 ; of Jesuits, 52S ; sessions of Congress, 256 ; 
provincial Legislature, 334; barra, 257; at elec- 
tion of J. Mosquera, 522; of Lopez, 521. 



Section 17. — Political Parties. 



For names of presidents and other magis- 
trates, see § 16. 

Conservadores : Are not conservatives, 
334; Mariano Ospina, 192,/. 193; Julio Arbo- 
leda, 563 ; Mariano Paris, 250 ; Jose Maria Par- 
is, 214 ; Sarda, 250 ; Quevedo, 249 ; Miguel 
Caldas, 526; Dr. Hoyos, 204; Sociedad del 
Nino-Dios, 528 ; Sociedad Filotemica, 528 ; op- 
pression of the poor, 52S ; (for Jesuits, see § 29). 

Liberales: Soto, 206; Azuero, 206; Diego 



Gomez, 303; C6rdova, 209; Escuela Republi- 
cana, 528 ; perreristas, 527 ; acts of violence, 
527. 

Golgotas : Murillo, 561 ; Galindo, 557 ; So- 
ciedad Democratica, 52S. 

Revolutions : Of 1830, 250 ; of 1841, 253 ; of 
1851, 530; of 1854, 555; premium for, 251. 
Convention of Ocana, 207; disruption of Co- 
lombia, 209 ; outrages in the Cauca, 527 ; an- 
nexation desired, 530; future prospects, 540. 



Section IS. — Treasury Department. 



Secretary: Jose Maria Plata, 258; rooms, 
258. 

Revenues : Small, 258 ; debts, 258 ; descen- 
tralizacion, 258 ; direct taxes, 25S ; on income, 



not on property, 337; progressive taxes, 335; 
forced contributions, 169 ; no poll-tax, 335 ; 
poor pay no taxes, 335, 540. Import duties, 
258; custom-house, 29, 33; officers, 30, 83; 



APPENDIX. 



601 



smuggling, 33. Transit duties : peaje, 50, 373 ; 
pasaje, 50, 94 ; pontazgo, 99 ; on sirup, 347. 
Alcabala, 25S; stamp -tax, 258. Monopolies: 
Salt, 9S ; spirits, 119 ; contract annulled, 334 ; 
tobacco, 99 ; provincial tax on, 335. Tithes 
and first-fruits, 259. 
Mails, 259 : Rates, 261 ; printed matter free, 



261 ; seeds free, 261 ; encomiendas, 260 ; horse 
sent by mail, 504. Mail-carrier on foot, 260; 
mounted, 35. Chasqui, 255. Mail-boxes, 259 ; 
canoe, 260. Mail robberies, 260. Foreign 
mails, 261. Letter-list, 261. 

Mint, 161 ; Manuel Restrepo, 161 ; coins, 119 ; 
uniformity of coinage, 259. 



Section 19.— Foreign Relations. 



Secretary : Lorenzo Maria Lleras, 380 ; 
rooms, 160 ; liberality of policy, 169, 509. 

American Charges d 1 Affaires: Appointment, 
166; Yelverton P. King, 166 ; James S. Greene, 
167. Consuls, 44, 511 ; Ramon Sanchez, 48 ; 
John A. Bennet, 140 ; Mr. Byrne (English), 511. 



Ministers of other nations : English, 166 ; 
French, 166; Venezuelan, 168; Legate of the 
Pope, 168. Non-intercourse with Spain, 168. 

Naturalization, 168 ; privileges of aliens, 
169 ; refuge with legations, 559 ; American le- 
gation stormed, 562. 



Section 20. — War and Marine Department. 



Militia : A failure, 557. 

Permanent Force: Hostility to, 556; im- 
pressment, 30S ; soldiers, 227, /. 228 ; stature, 
227 ; uniforms, /. 228 ; morals, 227 ; camp fol- 
lowers, 227 ; washing clothes, 227. 



Barracks, 198; magazine, 227; powder man- 
ufactory, 227. 
Method of making proclamations, 561. 
Gobernadores act as quarter-masters, 883,348. 
Soldiers as guards to prisoners, 234, 848, 361. 



Section 21. — Government Department — Law. 



Courts : Criminal code, 508 ; law adminis- 
tered, 406 ; compulsory and gratuitous defense, 
407; ignorant judges, 169,447; jury, 407; civil 
procedure, 409; imprisonment for debt, 377. 
Signature, 326. 

Prisons: Number, 312; trabajos forzados, 
107 ; casa de reclusion, 107 ; presidio at Mesa, 
348 ; at Toche, 860 ; at Bogota, 234 ; presidario 
at large, 359. Provincial prisons : Barranquil- 
la, 38 ; Bogota, 284 ; Ibague. 838. Cantonal : 
Fusagasuga, 299 ; Tocaima, 348 ; Mesa, 349 ; 



Cartago, 376; Palmira, 513. Parochial: on 
Magdalena, 58 ; Pandi, 312 ; Libraida, 415. 

Stocks, 312 ; feeding prisoners, 812 ; pardons, 
361; surveillance, 348; unmanageable prison- 
er, 349. Alcaide, 38. 

Capital Punishment: Preparations, 159; 
execution, 164 ; abolition desired, 205. 

Crimes : Murder of a priest, 349 ; corporal, 
557 ; paramour, 108 ; servant, 108 ; Sucre, 252 ; 
Pinto and Morales, 529 ; poisoning at the mili- 
tary school, 267. 



Section 22. — Government Department — Hospitals, Diseases, &c. 



Hospicio, 162; foundling wheel, 162,/. 163. 

Hospitals : Bogota, 281 ; Mesa, 34S ; Cali, 
517. 

Physicians : Do not live by practice, 233, 
457; surgery rare, 510 ; Dr. Cheyne, 233; Meri- 
zalde, 231 ; Blagborne, 306 ; Qulntero, 457. 
Bleeding by barber, 384. 

Apothecaries, 233 ; weights, 234, 485, 597. 

Diseases: Insanity rare, 238; deaf mutes, 
100, 322; goitre, 116,/. 320; cured by iodine, 



438, 482 ; jipatera, 76 ; dysentery, 232 ; con- 
sumption, 232 ; leprosy, 519 ; snake-bite as a 
remedy, 456 ; carate, 151 ; el galico, 78, 233 ; 
ear-ache, 3S4; worms, 445; epilepsy, 445; su- 
perficial ulcers, 348; snake bites, 582; secret 
remedies, 455. 

Sick : Neglected, 443, 445, 446 ; value of med- 
ical assistance, 822, 446. Medical knowledge 
useful, 73. Author's sickness: in the boat, 82 : 
Bogota, 146 ; Cauca, 483. 



Section 23. — Government Department — Schools and Literature. 



Schools : Sexes separated by law, 32 : Lan- 
casterian system, 36. Primary boys' schools : 
Sabanilla, 32 ; Barranquilla, 36 ; Villeta, 128 ; 
Bogota, 26S ; on Sunday, 198 ; Cerrito, 507 ; 
Palmira, 513 ; Mesa, 350 ; at sunrise, 459. 
Primary girls' schools : Guaduas, 106 ; Bogota, 
-268 ; Ibague\ 326 ; Cartago, 876 ; Cali, 518. 
Select schools: Small, 86; Guaduas, 106; Rol- 
danillo, 406 ; domestic education, 472. 

Colegios: Rosario,263; La Merced,'262; Es- 
piritu Santo, 153; of Santander's widow, 162; 
Ibaguo, 32S ; Cali, 518. Laboratory at Bogota, 
268 ; Professor Lewy, 268 ; Seminario Conciliar, 
267 ; Colegio Militar, 663 ; Professor Bergeron, 
263; Observatory, 64 ; Caldas, 265; Mutis,216. 

School-books and apparatus : Secured to the 
school, 518 ; alphabet wheel, 36. Heading- 
books: None for classes, 327; unsuitable, 327, 
376,472; Cartilla, 472 : Citolegia, 472. Arith- 
metic: Strange books, 327 ; Palmira, 513; Mesa, 
350. Calculus, 518. Logic, 303. Geography : 
Ignorance of, 327 ; put after mathematics, 327. 
Praying taught, 327 ; catechisms, 327 ; hymn- 
book, 518; care of toes in school, 507. 

Education : Speculative, 51S ; ambitious, 
518; degrees abundant, 361; LLD.'s turned 
traders, 514. 



Languages : Latin, 517 ; Bullions' text- 
books, 517 ; Greek, 268 ; Hebrew, 268 ; French, 
381; English, 268. Spanish grammar : Confu- 
sion of B and V, 191, 36S ; parsing, 518. Span- 
ish language : Like Latin, 306 ; poor in books, 
24 ; pronunciation, 567 ; words in -ado, 56 ; ser 
and estar, 148 ; puns, 143. 

Books: Semanario, 266 ; Boussaingault's pa- 
pers, 10S; General Acosta's works, 108; Sam- 
per's Apuntamientos, 507; Restrepo' s History, 
161 ; Bentham, 208 ; Colmena Espaflola, 404 ; 
Piquillo Aliaga, 474 ; Pope's Essay in English, 
286 ; French novels, 8S1. 

Libraries : National, at Bogota, 15S ; Pine- 
da's pamphlets, 159 ; of Dr. Merizalde, 231 ; Se- 
nor Guevara, 392; Cabal, 509; Mallarino, 522. 

Newspapers : From Paris, 315 ; Voz de Toli- 
ma, 333. Almanacs, 473. 

Poetry : Versification easy, 177. Josefa 
Acevedo de Gomez, 303 ; Jose Maria Samper, 
509 ; Prospero Pereira (Gamba), 339. 

Traditions : Bochica, 126 ; Anjel Lei, 339 ; 
hidden treasures, 248, 350, 443, 500, 539; ghosts 
rare, 340 ; puerile talcs, 369. 

Chorographic commission, 173 ; Colonel Co- 
dazzi, 172; Joso Maria Triana, 204; Manuel 
Ancisar, 173. 



602 



APPENDIX. 



Section 24. — Fine Arts. 



Painters : Vasquez, 192 ; Santibaflas, 376. 

Pictures : Sewing cloth on, 112 ; fastening 
on jewelry, 112 ; (for saints in churches, see § 
28) ; crucifixion at San Agustin, 197 ; Virgin 
in Santo Domingo (ascribed in the text to Vas- 
quez, but probably not his), 192 ; horse in the 
Cathedral, 195 ; marriage of Mary, 198 ; age of 
Joseph, 198 ; in San Pedro, Cali, 516. 

Statue of Bolivar, 158. 



Music : Hired in the Cathedral, 550 ; the 
Lamentations, 550 ; the Miserere, 550 ; in girls' 
school, Cali, 518 ; of nuns of Santa Ines, 199 ; 
priest in Cali, 516. Metres of hymns, 518. 
Performances at Salitre, 124. 

Musical Instruments : Guitar, 475 ; bando- 
la, 124,/. 441; tiple, 124; alfandoque, 124,/. 
441 ; drum, 448 ; tamborine, 440, /. 441. (Or- 
gans in § 28.) 



Section 25. — Amusements, Habits, and Social Life. 



Dancing : At Calamar, 53 ; near Bogota, 201 ; 
in the Cathedral, 196 ; at Fusagasuga, 295 ; 
Cartago, 377 ; La Paila, 439, /. 441 ; on Saint 
Peter's Day, 413 ; by priests, 413; on Sabbath, 
478 ; by priests on Sabbath, 296, 478 ; in the 
daytime, 201, 450 ; till morning, 479 ; when 
sick, 384; when just out of jail, 877. 

Dances : Bambuco, 440, /. 441 ; torbellino, 
443 ; bunde, 479 ; waltz, 440 ; queer dance, 53 ; 
continuous waltz, 201 ; masquerade ball, 305. 

Queer Couples : Children, 440 ; tall man 
and little girl, 443 ; boy and old woman, 478 ; 
grim old negro and pretty young girl, 479 ; the 
author challenged to dance ! 479. Carrying 
girls home on horseback, 4S0. 

Theatre : Bogota, 160 ; in open air at Carta- 
go, 877. 

Hunting, 490. Cooking for dogs, 496. 

Fishing: At Honda, 98, 101. 

Swimming: At Honda, 99; Bogota, 223, 226; 
Ubaque, 249 ; Cartago, 376 ; El Credo, 399 ; Pai- 
la, 451 ; Cali, 523. Swimmers of the first re- 
spectability, 481. Swimming the Cauca, 411. 
Morning ablutions, 56, 469 ; towels, 56, 338 ; a 
bath-vat, 538. 

Bull-feabts : Forbidden in Bogota, 296 ; at 
Fusagasuga, 299,/. 298; Paila, 453. 

Rope-dancing, 404 ; horse-racing, 453 ; hen- 
race, 452 ; duck-pulling, 414 ; beheading the 
cock, 414; card-playing, 124; (gambling in § 



26) ; cock-fighting, 144 ; tying a game-cock, 
175; marbles, 474; masquerades, 305; April- 
fools, 804. 

Smoking : Bringing fire, 170, 412 ; ladies 
smoking, 171 ; secretly, 171 ; smoking in bed, 
316, 341 ,• fire in the mouth, 171 ; cigarillos, 171 ; 
restraint on servants and soldiers, 146, 341; 
not allowed in church, 412 ; spitting, 146. 

Conversational powers, 171, 381 ; ladies 
generally retiring, 350 ; secluded, 171 ; the Cau- 
cana, 395 ; tertulia at Mesa, 350 ; peasant chil- 
dren, 446 ; imamiable, 411 ; inquisitiveness, 
319. 

Celebration of 7th of March : Bogota, 201 ; 
Cali, 520 ; (other celebrations in § 30) ; huzzas, 
413; riot, 413. 

Introductions rare, 412 ; they converse 
without, 502 ; salutations, 291 ; kissing, 116 ; 
kissing the hand, 537 ; embracing, 116, 3S2 ; on 
horseback, 511 ; embracing servants, 354, 382 ; 
house at your disposition, 81. 

Refreshments : Cigars, 170, 412 ; spirits, 
412 ; cake to ladies only, 412 ; dulce, 502. 

Hospitality : Limited at Bogota, 171 ; abus- 
ed, 108; at Ibague, 824; at a peasant's, 504; 
peasant strangers, 350; dinner on Saint Peter's 
day, 413 ; at the palace, 172 ; lunch of fish in a 
hut, 448 ; invitation and no dinner, 448 ; choc- 
olate at the hermit's, 534; kindness, 524, 541; 
no homes without hearths, 213. ' 



Section 26 Morals. 



Comparative morality of New Granada, 542. 

Sabbath, 478. Sunday markets: Guaduas, 
111 ; Fusagasuga, 296 ; approved by Archbish- 
op Mosquera, 111. Hunting, 490 ; theatre, 160 ; 
balls, 296, 478 ; cock-fighting, 828 ; rope-danc- 
ing, 404 ; sports permitted, 478. 

Filial Duties : Irreverence, 406 ; home, 213 ; 
foundling hospital, 162, /. 163. 

Life : Value of, 342, 376 ; (murders in § 21) ; 
neglect of sick, 443, 445, 446 ; quarreling, 519 ; 
rare, 71 ; attack on Mr. Haldane, 118. 

Intemperance : Not disgraceful, 454 ; rare, 
144 ; quiet, 454 ; noisy exception, 343 ; terms for 
drunken, 458 ; drinking at a ball, 479 ; (for 
drinks, see § 7 ; social life in § 25). 

Chastity : Spanish race make good hus- 
bands, 3S0 ; passions not strong, 23 ; seclusion 
of females, 171 ; license of language, 369 ; un- 
chastity at Ocana, 71 ; not very disgraceful, 66, 
320, 401 ; iu men not at all so, 295, 396 ; once 



treated seriously, 482 ; in the palace, 209 ; a 
servant, 151: Santander, 295; Haldane's tenant, 
117; the wily penitent, 245 ; (for unchastity of 
priests, see § 29) ; nuns reputable, 199 ; camp fol- 
lowers, 146 ; guarichas, 174. 

Theft, 375 ; string-stealing, 45 ; towels, 338, 
875 ; fences, 131 ; iron fence, 163 ; a robber, 513 ; 
traveling armed, 513 ; mail robberies rare, 260. 
Slavery limited, 205 ; abolished, 527 ; effects in 
Choc6, 881. 

Tenure of property : Undivided, 531 ; 
mortmain, 418; capellanias, 419; entail; 418; 
redeeming annual charges, 419 ; succession 
among Indians, 27. 

Gambling : Not disgraceful, 306 ; loteria, 
806 ; cachimona, 377 ; (for plays, see § 25). Beg- 
ging, 383, 34S, 524; generosity, 541. 

Veracity : Granadan view of, 483 ; Pedro the 
Liar, 389 ; the Vanilla planter, 893 ; lying from 
small motive, 483 ; the dead voter, 507. 



Section 27. — Religion — Dogmas. 

Church orthodox in the main, 182 ; salvation I Virgin : Advocaciones, 186 ; perpetual vir- 
by works, 180. Purgatory, 182; time in, 546. ginity, 182; omnipresence, 495; miraculous 
Forgiveness of sin, 421. j birth of Christ, 182. 



Section 28. — Religion — Material Objects. 



Churches : Numerous, 185 ; not beautiful, 
186 ; old, 1S5 ; in building, 457, 505 ; begun and 
abandoned, 64, 222, 531. Cathedral, 194, /. 156 ; 
church at Barranquilla, 88 ; Guaduas, 112 ; 
Villeta, 123 ; Las Nieves, 186 ; Humilladero, 



162; Moncerrate, 215; Guadalupe, 222; Egip- 
to, 224 ; La Pena, 224 ; Libraida, 412 ; Cerrito, 
/. 506 ; Roldanillo, 406 ; Cali, 516. 

Monasteries: Of San Francisco, Bogota, 
189 ; at Cali, 516 ; La Tercera, 188 ; Santo Do- 



APPENDIX. 



603 



mingo, 191; San Agustin, 196. Nunneries: La 
C'oncepcion, 198 ; Santa In6s, 199. Ermitas, 214. 

Parts op a Church : Sacristia, 112 ; capilla, 
159 ; high altar, 112 ; altars, 112 ; camarin, 187 ; 
images, 112 ; curtains, 187 ; sagrario, 187 ; ara, 
187 ; sides of the altar, 113 ; mercy-door, 156 ; 
confessionals, 196 ; in nunnery, 200 ; seats, 188 ; 
choir, 194 ; music gallery, 187. 

Implements : Wafer, 113 ; custodia, 187 ; 
chalice, 113 ; patena, 113 ; ornamentos, 112 ; 
hisopo, 192 ; cilicio, 189 ; disciplina, 189 ; par- 
amentos, 112 ; mirrors, 189 ; monumentos, 550; 
pesebre, 467. 

Images: Manufacture, 516; in their shirts, 
187; domestic saints, 139; Nino-Dios, 405 ; San 
Jorje, 375; advocaciones of the Virgin, 186; Do- 
lores, 139; Soledad, 553. Miraculous Images: 
Chiquinquira, 186 ; La Pena, 224 ; Moncerrate, 
217 ; Guadalupe, 222 ; Queremal, 517 ; Las La- 
jas, 517 ; votive offerings, 224, /. 225. 

Pictures : San Cristoval, 226 ; Saint Francis 
preaching to the fishes, 190 ; choice of Saint 
Dominic, 191 ; ass kneeling to the hostia, 189 ; 



air full of devils, 191 ; Virgin in dormitory of 
monks, 191 ; devil putting out the lights, 191 ; 
devils tossing a saint, 233 ; devil and saint 
hanging a man, 233 ; birth of Santa Ines, 200 ; 
Abelard and Heloise, 233 ; lithographs wanted, 
255; sewing cloth and jewels to pictures, 112 ; 
(pictures as works of art in § 24). 

Organs, 187 ; Barranquilla, 39 ; Roldanillo, 
406. Bells, 186; clocks, 108, 185; rattle, 551 ; 
incense, 114 ; candle-poles, 114 ; candles, 365 ; 
rockets, 113, 450 ; guns, 520 ; toys, 467. 

Cemeteries : Plan, 229 ; chapel, 60 ; b6ve- 
das, 60 ; bones disturbed, 229 ; inscriptions, 229 ; 
expectant boveda, 114 ; coffins, 115 ; at Ibague, 
329, /. 329 ; public coffins, 115 ; used as punish- 
ment, 107 ; rude biers, 115, 444 ; habit of Saint 
Francis, 516. 

Cemetery at Mompos, 60 ; Guaduas, 114 ; 
Bogota, 228 ; English cemetery, 163 ; Potters' 
Field, 230; for suicides, etc., 231; Pandi, 312; 
Ibague, 329 ; Paila, 444 ; mausoleum near Pie- 
dras, 341 ; Indian graves, 588 ; (sickness in § 22 ; 
death and funerals in § 30). 



Section 29. — Religion — Persons. 



Priesthood a monopoly, 23; priests worse 
than in Protestant countries, 23 ; conservatives, 
38 ; a civil officer under the alcalde, 325 ; rare- 
ly preaches, 552, 555 ; a good preacher, 531. 

Dress of priests, 192; satacuello, 65; tonsure, 
66 ; habits of the Jesuits, 193, /. 193. 

Unchastity of priests, 67 ; apology for, 66 ; 
marriage would be disreputable, 417 ; marriage 
prevented, 67; seducer of young girls, 67; 
Bishop of Popayan, 25 ; priest at Banco, 65 ; 
Choachi, 245 ; Vijes, 532. 

Disorderly Priests: Tibacui, 301; Pandi, 
310. Priest dancing, 413; on Sabbath, 478; 
ensign of a Sabbath ball, 296; preparing for the 



Sabbath, 305; at cock-fight on Sunday, 328; 
treating with punch, 415 ; interfere with poli- 
tics, 557. 

Canonigos, 194 ; Saavedra, 552. 

Monks worse than the seculars, 67 ; Francis- 
cans, 190 ; Italian image-maker, 516 ; Agustin- 
ians, 198; Hospitallers, 232; number of monks 
and nuns, 199. 

Jesuits : Dress of, /.193 ; expelled, 232, 508 ; 
recalled, 508 ; interfered with politics, 528 ; re- 
expelled, 528. 

Nuns, 199 ; dowry for admission, 171. 

La Tercera, 188 ; Cofradia, 189 ; beatas, 193 ; 
minoristas, 194 ; hermit, 532. 



Section 30. — Religion — Ceremonies. 



Intention necessary, 180, 305. 

Baptism, 476 ; lay, 483 ; completed, 476 ; nec- 
essary to salvation, 180. 

Names : Theory of, 261 ; names of the Vir- 
gin, 186 ; of Jesus, 145 ; specimen of masculine 
names, 449 ; convenient name needed, 402 ; let- 
ter lists, 261 ; surnames, 261 ; tocayos, 106. 

God-parents : Relationships by baptism, 
181 ; a bar to marriage, 181 ; a screen for sin, 
181 ; terms assumed from friendship, 1S1. 

Confirmation, 181. 

Eucharist : Communion, 182 ; rare, 184 ; 
poisoning with wafer, 188 ; first communion, 1S1. 

Mass : Said fasting, 182 ; early, 99 ; fasting 
for mass, 305 ; said or sung, 112 ; at midnight, 
296. Ceremonies, 112; for the dead, 520; sol- 
diers at mass, 114, 520 ; triple mass, 547 ; pros- 
tration at the altar, 552, 554 ; Gloria mass, 554. 

Penance: Confession rare, 184; fasts, 514; 
neglected, 184 ; ejercicios at La Tercera, 189 ; 
scourging, 1S9 ; Lent, 544. 

Extreme Unction, 329 ; cockroach story, 
514. 

Orders : (for priests, see § 29). 

Matrimony: Ceremonies, 477 ; fee, 118; civil 
marriage, 352. 

Praying: Rosary, 183; crown, 183; trisagio, 
518; crossing one's self, 184; family prayer on 
Sabbath, 183 ; omitted, 183 ; men avoid, 183 ; 
service at meals, 472. Ceremonies not impos- 
ing, 544 ; effect on the mind, 555. 

Church-worship: Not splendid, 1S4; dress 
for, 184 ; hats not allowed, 1S6 ; nor zamarros 



or cigars, 412 ; manner of sitting, 188. Sermons 
rare, 555 ; Saavedra' s, 552 ; a good preacher but 
bad liver, 531. 

Music: Always bad, 187; no tunes nor me- 
tres, 518 ; music of nuns, 199 ; a priest that 
could sing, 516 ; cathedral service, 194. 

Processions : In church, 197 ; ass in church, 
545 ; prohibition in streets proposed, 296 ; Prot- 
estants uncover, 546 ; or are insulted, 545. Fu- 
sagasuga, 296; Paila, 444; Cali, 517; in Holy 
Week, 545. 

Holy Week Ceremonies : La resena, 547 ; 
adoring the cross, 552 ; washing feet, 551 ; bells 
silent, 551 ; blessing palm leaves, 545 ; paschal 
candle, 554 ; fire, oil, and water, 554 ; curtain- 
rending, 548, 554; speaking through a tube, 
549 ; lamentations, 550 ; tinieblas, 550 ; mise- 
rere, 550 ; monumentos, 550 ; descent from the 
cross, 553; resurrection, 554. Saint Veronica's 
handkerchief, 549. Winding-sheet of Christ, 
553 ; piece of the cross, 550. 

Festivals: Movable, 544; Christmas, 467; 
Corpus, 544; Lent, 544; Ash -Wednesday, 544; 
Saint Peter's Day, 413 ; Saint John's Day, 450; 
Innocents' Day, 304 ; Palm-Sunday, 544 ; Mon- 
day in Holy Week, 546 ; Tuesday, 547 ; Wednes- 
day, 548; Thursday, 550; Good-Friday, 552; 
Holy Saturday, 554 ; Paschal Sunday, 554. 

Funerals : Rejoicing at the death of a baby, 
322, 446 ; dead baby a term of depreciation, 
206 ; annual funeral rites, 229 ; burial at Bogo- 
ta, 229; Paila, 444; Cali, 519; (for cemeteries, 
etc., see § 28). 



Section 31. — Animals 
Mammalia ; rare, 3S9. 
Homo (see § 2). 
Quadrumana ; monos and micos, monkeys : in 



Classification of Cuvier. 

trees, 76; confined and spiteful, 100; males 
only kept, 455. 
Cheiroptera ; murcielagos, bats, 140, 303. 



604 



APPENDIX. 



Felis domestica ; gato, cat, 455. 

F. concolor ; leon, puma, cougar, catamount, 

painter, panther, 460. 
F. onca; tigre, jaguar, 460. 
Ursus Americanus? oso, bear, 367. 
Cavia Cobaia; curi, Guinea-pig, 4A1. 
Dasyprocta Acuschy ; guatin, guardatinaja, 

447. 
Acheus AT; perico lijero, sloth, 3S8. 
Dasypus sp. ; armadillo, 142. 
Elephas primigenius ; fossil elephant, 273. 
Sus scropha ; marrano, cochino, hog, 488. 
Tapirus sp. ; danta, tapir, 493. 
Equus (in § 11). 

Cervus Peronei ; ciervo, deer, 496. 
Capra Hircus ; chibo, cabra, goat, 465, 474. 
Ovis Aries ; oveja, sheep, 402, 488. 
Bos Taurus (see § 11). 
Manatus Americanus; manati, 46. 
Vultur gryphus ; condor, buitre, 495. 
V. Papa ; rei de los gallinazos, king of vultures, 

280. 
V. Jota; gallinazo, chulo, 230. 
Hirundo rufa, var. tijereto, 524. 
Steatornis Caripensis; guacharo, 264, 812. 
Crotophaga Piririgua ; garrapatero, 525. 
Ramphactes sp. ; Bios te ve, toucan, 359. 
Psittacussp. ; loro, perico, parrot,paroquet, 447, 

510. 
Ara glaucus ; guacamayo, macaw, 127. 
Ourax Alector ; pauji, 127. 
Penelope sp. ; pava, 495. 
Meleagris Gallopavo ; pisco, pavo real, turkey, 

359. 
Phasianus gallus (in § 8, 9, 25). 
Ardea alba ; garza, crane, 136. 



Scopus sp. ; cocli, 525. 

Testudo serpentaria ? tortuga, turtle, 487. 

Emys sp. ; galapago, terrapin, 487. 

Crocodilus; caiman, alligator, 71. 

Lacertinidse ; legartos, lizards, 85; Salaman- 
queja, 35. 

Ophidia ; culebras, serpientes, snakes : rare, 

' 275, 322; venomous, 492, 495; treading on 
fangs, 499 ; protection of boots, 532 ; reme- 
dies for bites, 455 ; snake stories, 456, 499 ; 
equis, 498. 

Batrachia ; rana, frog, 49. 

Pisces ; pescado, fish, 98, 136. 

Eaius sp. ; raya, ray, 341. 

Bulimus oblongus; caracol, snail, 304. 

Mycetopus siliquoides, 377. 

Anodonta Holtonis,* 877. 

Lumbricus sp. ; earth-worm, 224. 

Elater noctiluca ; cocuyo, 110. 

G-ryllus sp. ; chillador, cricket, 474. 

Cimex lectularius ; chinche, bug, 49. 

C. sp. ; petacon, 49. 

Neuroptera ; hormigas, ants : arrieros, Banco, 
64; Tulua, 65; Bolivia, 53S; finding their, 
way, 65. Venomous ants, 487, 456. 

Vespa sp. ; avispa, wasp, 90, 102. 

Culex sp. ; mosquito, gnat, 69 ; zancudo, mus- 
quito, 72, 373 ; smoking them, 475. 

Pulex ; pulga, flea, 331, 387 ; in church, 551 

P. penetrans : nigua, jigger, chigoe, 330 ; in 
church, 445. 

Acarus sp. ; garrapata, tick, 481. 

Coccus cacti ; cochinilla, cochineal, 488. 

Infusoria; tiza, 388. 

Animal-plant ? 456. 



Section 82. — Plants: Endlicher's Classification. 



Conferva, 360. 

Equisetum, 370. 

Filices; helechos,/ern«, 285; palos-bobos, tree- 
ferns, 2S9, /. 2S5 ; fence of tree-ferns, 124 ; 
pillars, 224. 

Lygodium hirsutum, 69. 

Lycopodium sp., 255. 

Dichromena ciliata, 92. 

Oryza sativa; arroz, rice, 500. 

Zea Mays ; mais, maize, 487. 

Oynerium sp. ; cafia-brava, 71. 

Chusquea scandens ; chusque, 217. 

Ghiadua latifolia ; guadua, 109 ; flower, 416 ; 
cultivated, 535. 

Triticiim sp. ; trigo, wheat, 133, 399. 

Saccharum officinale ; cana dulce, sugar-cane, 
118, 4S7, 535. 

Hydrocleis, 438. 

Limnocharis marginata, 438. 

Sagittaria sp., 437. 

Pontederia azurea, 438, 514. 

Typha sp. ; cat-tail flag, 30. 

Alstroemeria sp., 180. 

Dioscorea sp. ; name, yam, 151. 

Amaryllis, 96. 

Agave sp. ; cabuya de Mejico, 495. 

Fourcroya gigantea ; fique, cabuya, mague, 246. 

Bromelia Karatas ; pinuela, 103. 

Pitcairnia, 489. 

Tillandsia sp. ; salvaje, Spanish moss, 53, 439. 

Cattleya sp. ; azucena, 416. 

Odontoglossum, 220. 

Sobralia, 416. 

Vanilla sp. ; vainilla, vanilla, 398. 

Maranta sp. ; sagu, arrow-root, 146. 

Heliconia sp. ; lengua de vaca, 68. 

H. Bihai ; bihao, 374. 

Canna Indica ; achira, Indian shot, 148. 

JIusa paradisaica ; platano harton, plantain, S7. 

M. sapientium ; guineo, banana, 88. 

SI. regia; dominico, 88. 



Aroids, 34 

Pistia Stratiotes, 438. 

Dieffenbachia sp. ; runcho, 438. 

Arum esculentum ? rascadera, 538. 

Carludovica palmata ; iraca, nacuma, jipijapa, 

63, 400. 
Phytelephas inacrocarpa ; cabeza de negro. 

vegetable ivory, 69, 438, /. 70. 
Attalea amygdalina ; almendron, 400. 
Ceroxylon andicola ; palma de cera, wax-palm. 

365, 494. 
Phoenix dactylifera ; datile, date, 304. 
Cocos nucifera ; coco, cocoa-palm, 72, 410, 501 ; 

Corozo, 474; Palmicbe, cabbage-palm, 149. 
Coniferse ; not seen, 243. 
Cecropia peltata ; guarumo, 87. 
Artocarpus incisa ; arbol de pan, bread-fruit. 

439. 
Morus tinctoria ; moro, fustic, 53. 
Salix sp. ; sauce, willow, 201. 
Chenopodium anthelminticum ; paica, worm- 
seed, 445. 
Polygonate ; bellisima, 62. 
Nyctaginates rare, 85. 
Persea gratissima ; aguacate, cura, alligator 

pear, avocado pear, 410. 
Aristolochia reticulata, 585. 
A. ringens ; zaragoza, 585. 
A. anguicida ; guaco, 457. 
Mikania guaco ; guaco, 457. 
Espeletia Frailexon; frailejon, 216. 
Mutisia, 216. 

Achyrophorus sessiliflorus ; achicoria, 125. 
Coffea Arabica ; cafe, coffee, 588. 
Calycophyllum coccineum, 819. 
Cinchona sp. ; quifta, bark, 125, 2S6, 308. 



* Anodonta Holtonis, Lea: ined. Testa \asvi, oblongfl. 
inflata, valde inaaquilaterali, e natibus lineatis ; valvulis 
subcrassis ; natibus subprominentibus ; epidermide tene- 
broso-olivacea, striata ; margarita cucrulea et iridescente. 

Hab. — In Btagno Carthaginis Novogranitensium. 



APPENDIX. 



605 



Lantana, 94. 

Gentiana, 218. 

Mentha piperita; yerba-buena, peppermint, 

368. 
Batatas edulis; batatas, sweet potato, 471. 
Nicotiana Tabacum ; tabaco, tobacco, 4S8. 
Datura arborea ; borrachero, 131. 
D. sanguinea, 131. 

Solanum Lycopersicum ; tomate, tomato, 485. 
Aragoa cupressina, 216. 
A. abietina, 255. 
A. juniperina, 216. 
Urescentia cujete; totumo, 74. 
Achras Sapota ; nispero, 314. 
Vaccinium, 212. 

Thibaudia; uva Cimarron a, 216. 
T. Quereme; quereme, 517. 
Befaria resinosa ; pega-pega, 203. 
Anethum Fceniculum ; anis, fennel, 50. 
Oonium sp. ; arracacha, 150. 
Vitis vinifera ; parra, grape, 346. 
Loranthus, 224. 
L. Mutisii, 240, 551. 
Anona Cherimolia ; chirimoya, 502. 
A. muricata; guanitbana, sow sop, 502. 
A. squamosa; anon, 502. 
Drymis Winteri ; canelo, Winter* s-bark, 23S. 
Sedum bicolor, 218. 
Berberis glauca, 254. 
Bocconia frutescens, 126. 
Capparidate tree, 525. 
Nympha^a, 437. 

Bixa Orellana ; achiote, bija, arnatto, 141. 
Passiflora (tree!), 416. 
P. quadrangularis ; badea, 34, 130. 
P. ligularis ; curuba en Cauca, 130 ; granadillo, 

130. 
Screen of Passiflora, 501. 
Tacsonia speciosa ; curuba de Bogota, 130. 
Loasa, 242. 

(Jarica Papaya ; papaya, papaw, 31. 
Cucurbita sp. ; calabaza, calabash, 74. 
Begonia sp. ; borla de San Pedro, 220. 
Oereus grandiflorus, 23. 
C. Pitajaya; pitahaya, 525. 
Melocactus or Mammillaria, 342. 
Ehipsalis ; discipline, 439. 
Opuntia ; tuna, prickly pear, 301. 
Pereskia, 503. 

Portulaca oleracea ; verdolaga, purselane, 446. 
Dianthus Caryophyllus, pink, 538. 
Gossypium sp. ; algodon, cotton, 289. 
Sida, escoba, 474. 

Bombax Ceiba ; ceiba, cotton-tree, 506. 
Matisia sp. ; zapote, 390. 



Helicteres, 94. 

Theobroma Cacao ; cacao, cocoa, chocolate, 88 ; 
(indigenous), 515. 

T. arborescens ; madrono, 304. 

Guazuma tomentosa ; guazimo, 439. 

Vallea stipularis, 203. 

Citrus Aurantium; naranja, orange, 72. 

C. vulgaris; naranja agria, sour orange, 121. 

C. Limetta; lima, lime, 438. 

C. Limetta var. ; limon dulce, sweet lime, 74. 

Coriaria, 226. 

Sapindus saponaria; chambimbe, soap-berry. 
469. 

Batis maritima, 46. 

Euphorbia cotinifolia ; manzanillo, 310. 

Dalechampia, 319. 

Styloceras laurifolium, 220. 

Hura crepitans ; apacua, sandbox-tree, 47. 

Hippomane Mancinella ; manzanillo, manchi- 
neel, 32. 

Cnidoscolus stimulosa, 33. 

Curcas purgans ; purga de fraile, 532. 

Manihot utilissima ; yuca, 62, 322, 400. 

Phyllanthus, 164. 

Mangifera Indica ; mango, mango, 304. 

Anacardium ; caracoli, cashew, 61. 

Simaba Cedron ; cedron, 457. 

Guaiacum sp. ; guayacan, 289. 

Oxalis tuberosa; oca, 150. 

Tropseolum majus ; pajarito, nasturtion, 130. 

Bucida capitata ; granadillo, 2S5. 

Laguncularia racemosa, 31. 

Rhizophora Mangle ; mangle, mangrove, 32. 

Fuchsia, 126, 368. 

Codazzia rosea, 242. 

Psidium pomiferum ; guayaba, guava, 72. 

Jambosa vulgaris ; pomarosa, 304. 

Lecythis, 536. 

Fragaria vesca ; fresa, strawberry, 149, 539. 

Alchemilla nivalis, 255. 

Cerasus Capollin ; cerezo, cherry, 201. 

Chrysobalanus Icaco ; hicaco, 73. 

Lupinus, 218. 

Indigofera tinctoria ; anil, indigo, 4S8. 

Cicer Arietinum ; garbanzo, chick-pea, 150. 

Pisum sativum ; alverja, pea, 143. 

Ervum Lens; lenteja, lentil, 150. 

Vicia Faba ; haba, Windsor bean, 150. 

Mucuna sp. ; pica-pica, cowhage, 302. 

Erythinia sp. ; chocho, 302. 

Phaseolus vulgaris ; frisol, frijol, judia, Yankee- 
bean, 150. 

Abrus precatorius, bead-pea, 34. 

Guilandina Bonduc, burning-bean, 46. 



THE END. 



M!6 



-i 19W 



